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TWENTIETH CENTURY SERIES 


In the Midst of Alarms . . Robert Barr 

The Devil’s Playground . . John Maekie 

The Face and the Mask . . Robert Barr 

The Phantom Death , W. Clark Russell 
The Sale of a Soul . F. Frankfort Moore 

In Preparation 

Sinners Twain 


Toxin 


John Maekie 
. . Ouida 





9 


Sale of a Soul 


F^FRANKFORT MOORE 

<: i) I f 


Illustrated by H. C. Edwards 



uH-OCc 


FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 




Copyright, 1895, by 


FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY. 




THE SALE OF A SOUL 


chapter I. 

** Will she come ? ” 

That was the question which a man 
named Stuart Forrest asked of the bob- 
bing buoy, at which he was gazing 
earnestly through the open porthole of 
his cabin on the starboard side of the 
steamship Demerara. 

The buoy nodded a response, gravely 
and assuringly ; but immediately after- 
ward it gave a bob and a burlesque 
tumble that suggested something of the 
fascinating movement of a short-skirted 
dancer, who, after a foolish five minutes 
of dialogue around her, feels that her 
hour has come. 

He kept his eyes fixed upon the 
gyrating thing, as though he looked for 


2 


XLbc Sale of a SouL 


a pair of nimble feet to appear above 
the yellow waters of the Mersey, from 
beneath the submerged skirt, so to 
speak ; but the buoy became tranquil 
once again, and when he repeated his 
question, “ Will she come ? ” gave an- 
other assenting nod in his direction. 

It was a less enigmatical respondent 
than the fluctuating table which is re- 
solved into the medium of communica- 
tion between a darkened drawing room 
and a world where there is no need for 
grammar. 

He did not look for a response from 
the buoy ; and, as a matter of fact, he 
did not know that he was looking at it 
until it had answered him with some 
show of familiarity ; but now he ac- 
cepted its reply as final. 

She would come. 

And he continued staring out across 
the unlovely yellow of the swirling 
estuary. A clumsy, stumpy little 
steamer chopped up the water alongside 
the Demerara^ and sent a splash or two 
in the direction of his porthole as it 
went perspiring on. A broad hooker 




tibe Sale of a Soul. 


3 


with brown sails fought her way pain- 
fully against the current. 

“ Did he wish her to come ?” 

That was the question which seemed 
to be whispered behind him, — on such 
unfamiliar terms may a man be with his 
conscience, — as he stood with his face 
framed by the brazen ring of the port- 
hole. Had his face been that of a 
woman, an imaginative observer would 
have seen the shining circle and have 
talked of a halo. So the commonplace 
becomes glorified, and many possible 
inaccuracies are transmitted from gene- 
ration to generation. 

Did he wish her to come ? ” 

In an instant the buoy was revealed 
once more, and now it was frantically 
kicking out, as it were, to right and left, 
with all the ardor of a ballerina of bur- 
lesque, who makes a mock of the senti- 
ments. 

He turned away from the indecencies 
of the rolling thing, and sat on the edge 
of his bunk, looking at the various 
articles of furniture in the berth, and at 
the colored labels which invested the 


4 


Xlbc Sale ot a Soul. 


side of his portmanteau, with artistic 
interest. Above him on the deck feet 
were tramping, cases were being tum- 
bled about, the slack of coiled-down 
ropes was being thrown about with a 
rattle. Boats were swinging at the 
handrail, and others were being forced 
up to it, to allow of passengers clamber- 
ing on board. Hurricane voices were 
exchanging views on certain topics 
of circumscribed interest, from the 
steamer’s bridge, to the occupants of the 
boats, and with the mingled sensations 
of bustle, evermore there came a whiff 
of coal smoke, blown downward from 
one of the funnels of the jDemerara — the 
congenial flavoring of the unpalatable 
compound of sounds and sights pre- 
sented by the Mersey at the dusk of an 
October day. 

From the cabin adjoining that in 
which Stuart Forrest was sitting — some- 
what uneasily — there came to his ears 
the sound of a woman’s sobbing and a 
man’s futile remonstrance. Then mur- 
murs from both. A husband and wife 
were parting, he knew, and the man 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


5 


was endeavoring to convince the woman 
that a year would pass away as easily as 
the steamer would pass from her moor- 
ings — he could hear the persuasive tone 
of the arguments of the man who, though 
a husband, still fancied that the duration 
of a woman’s sobs is dependent upon 
the validity of an argument. 

“ Every hour, every minute, day and 
night. I'll think of you, my husband,” 
were the words that came spasmodically 
between the sobs. 

They made Stuart Forrest feel a trifle 
uneasy in his mind ; and the more 
uneasy he felt, the more convinced did 
he become that it was scarcely honor- 
able for him to sit there listening to an 
exchange of confidences between a hus- 
band and wife. He had certain well- 
defined views as to the sacredness of 
the relationship between a husband and 
wife. He hung up the hat which he 
was still wearing, and put on a travel- 
ing cap, and then ran up the companion 
to the deck-house. 

It was crowded with passengers and 
their friends, standing together in groups. 


6 


Zbc Sale of a Soul» 


each group being quite self-centered and 
taking no interest whatever in another. 
A grim father was giving some advice 
to a young son whom he was sending 
into the world to shift for himself ; and 
the son was pretending to give all his 
attention to the precepts of his father, 
while all the time he was watching a 
dark-eyed girl saying a cheerful good- 
by to her brother, — everyone could 
perceive by the cheerfulness of their 
parting that they were brother and sis- 
ter, — and as the grim father exorted his 
son to be very discreet as to the com- 
pany he kept, and particularly as to the 
female element which was popularly 
supposed to give a certain charm to 
society, the son was beginning to feel 
that a voyage to the West Indies 
was not to be greatly dreaded when 
made aboard a steamer that included 
among its passengers a girl with such 
eyes. 

A Spanish merchant was giving his 
representative final instructions regard- 
ing certain documents which he held at 
the delta of an enormous pocketbook — 


Zbc Sale of a SouU 


7 


its mouths gaped for bills and bonds ; 
a boy and girl were saying good-by to 
their father and mother, who were go- 
ing back to one of the islands ; and an 
elderly aunt, who had charge of the 
young people, was absorbing the atten- 
tion of both the father and mother : 
they were trying to recover her from 
the attack of sea-sickness which had 
prostrated her through making the voy- 
age from the quay side to the steamer, 
so that she might be able to return with 
as little delay as possible. The boy was 
inclined to be merry at his aunt’s dis- 
comfiture, though every now and again 
he became grave as the possibility sug- 
gested itself to him of his father’s omit- 
ting to give him that sovereign which, 
as an agency for assuaging the agony of 
parting from his parents, he had never 
known to fail. 

Stuart Forrest stood alone at one side 
of the deck-house and watched the 
various groups, though taking an in- 
terest in none ; for he had begun to ask 
himself once again that question : 

“ Will she come ? ” 


8 


XLbc Sale of a Soul. 


It would be so like a woman not to 
come — to change her mind at the last 
moment. To be sure, she had told him 
that she loved him and that she would 
do whatever he might ask her. Well, 
he had simply asked her to meet him 
aboard the Defnerara in order that, on 
the voyage to the West Indies, they 
might have a favorable opportunity of 
discussing their future, and the form 
which it should assume, so as to 
afford them the minimum of incon- 
venience. She had agreed to meet him 
aboard the steamer on this evening, and 
yet he had doubts as to her keeping her 
promise. 

He had had a long and by no means 
unvaried experience of women, and the 
result of his experience was to make 
him doubtful of the one woman of 
whom he was thinking. 

The fact was that he would not have 
loved her so fervently as he did, or as 
he fancied he did, which, in the case of 
love, amounts to the same thing, if he 
had not felt that he had some rea- 
son for being doubtful of her keep- 




XLhc Sale of a Soul. 


9 


ing her promise ; and it is almost cer- 
tain that if she had not kept her 
promise, he would have continued lov- 
ing her with as great fervency as 
ever — until the next woman turned up 
with eyes that suggested some wonder 
of passion through which he had not 
yet passed. 

He loved her so well that he had 
actually a distant hope that she would 
justify his doubts of her — that she 
would not come to him. The hope 
was, however, a distant one. It was 
a survival of a better nature of his — 
a survival of a past habit of life 
which had suffered atrophy through 
disuse. 

When another five minutes had 
passed, the impression that perhaps she 
would not come grew stronger. If she 
did not come he would be compelled 
to take a voyage to the West Indies 
alone, and that would not be a pleasant 
experience, unless 

He wondered if that girl with the 
large violet eyes and the unusually long 
lashes was on the passenger list. He 


lO 


XLbc tdale of a Soul, 


became quite interested in that girl, so 
that the cabin-boy, who was making for 
the companion stairs with a portman- 
teau, a dressing bag, a bonnet box, and 
a bundle of wraps with umbrellas and 
sunshades badly strapped inside them, 
suggesting a woman’s touch, was com- 
pelled to say, “ By your leave, sir,” in 
order to pass. 

Mr. Forrest moved to one side, and 
the cabin-boy went past him. 

He was followed by a lady who wore 
a very effective traveling costume, and 
a hat to match. Her veil was not so 
thick as to make it impossible for the 
average man to see that her face was a 
very lovely one, and that it was very 
pale. Stuart Forrest was perhaps an 
average man. At any rate, he had long 
ago come to know that her face was 
very lovely ; indeed, he had had 
moments of thinking that it was the 
loveliest face of any woman in the 
whole world. He had, however, never 
before seen it quite so pale as it was 
now, as she went down the companion 
stairs. 


I 


^bc Sale of a Soul. 


II 


The question which he had asked 
himself so frequently during the after- 
noon was answered. She had come. 

He drew a long breath. Was it of 
satisfaction ? 


\ 




CHAPTER II. 


An hour afterward they stood together 
amidships, looking over the side of the 
steamer at the lights of the shore, which 
were fast dwindling to the dimension of 
glowworms’ lanterns, as the Demerara 
steamed out of the Mersey. The yel- 
low water of the evening had become 
black in night, save where the great 
patches of froth churned up by the pro- 
peller spread themselves abroad in the 
wake of the Demerara. Far away the 
flashes that came from the light-ships 
made luminous tunnels through the 
black night. 

“ You are mine now — mine — mine at 
last ! ” he said, in that low voice of his 
which became tremulous with passion 
with scarcely an effort on his part. It 
was this peculiarity of his voice which — 
with a few other considerations — had 
enlarged the range of his experience of 
woman and her ways. 


12 


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XLbc Sale of a Soul. 13 

“Yes," she said, “I am yours; but 
do not say ‘now.’ Was I not always 
yours ? A woman is a man’s only by 
the bond of love ; and was there ever a 
moment in which we did not love ? ’’ 

“ I had only to see you, Agnes," he 
murmured. “ No, by Heaven ! I believe 
that if I had never seen you, if I had 
only come near you even without letting 
my eyes rest upon that face which has 
become all this world to me,— ah ! all 
this world and the world to come, — if I 
had only come near you I know that I 
should have been conscious of being 
near the one love of my life." 

“ I know it — I know it," she said, as 
he grasped her hand. “ Ah, thank 
God, it came to me before it was too 
IsLte—you came to me before it was too 
late ! Whatever may come to us now, 
we shall have loved — we shall have 
lived." 

“ That is how you feel, that is how I 
feel. Every word you speak seems to 
come from my heart in coming from 
yours." 

“ That is what love means." 


14 


Zbc Sale ot a Soul. 


He knew it quite as well as she did — 
perhaps better. She had loved much : 
he had loved many. 

“ That is what love means,” he 
whispered. His voice was the voice of 
a man who is holding in his hand the 
hand of the woman he loves. “ You 
know the line, dearest — Shelley ? 

“ ‘ Her voice was like the voice of his own 
soul.’ 

Ah, Shelley knew what 'tis to love ! 
His life and hers — the woman’s — Mary’s 
— made up the very lyric of love — the 
most passionate expression of that love 
which glorifies the world — our love ! ” 

Being in love with him, she was not 
aware of any note of arrogance in his 
voice. She grasped at the allusion to 
Shelley and his Mary. It lifted up her 
heart when her heart was drooping. If 
she had not been conscious of its droop- 
ing, she would not have thought it 
necessary to make the attempt to raise 
it by giving vigorous expression to cer- 
tain sentiments which she had felt cer- 
tain she entertained on the subject of 


I 


^Tbe Sale of a Soul, 15 

human love. But his reference to the 
Shelley manage was very comforting to 
her. 

“ She was right — oh, yes ; I have al- 
ways felt that Mary was right,” she 
cried. “ Yes, years before I had any 
idea that I — that I ” 

She wanted to say before she had had 
any idea that she would one day look to 
Mary for consolation ; but her voice 
broke. She put her hands over her face 
and began to weep. 

He had had considerable experience 
of women, as has already been stated, 
but this phase was outside the radius 
of his experience. He was amazed. 

What had a woman to weep for when 
he was beside her — a woman who, a 
few minutes before, had so fluently 
enunciated her views on the subject of 
the mystery of love ? 

He was amazed. 

It must have been the sea air, he 
felt — yes, the sea air, or the dreary 
aspect of the deck of the steamer with 
those whiffs from the funnels and the 
deck-house where some cooking was 


1 6 Zbc Sale of a SouL 

being done. He was a fool to have 
suggested to her the taking of this 
voyage with him. He should have fol- 
lowed the course of true lovers, which 
runs smooth in the direction of Italy. 
But the entrance to the Mersey on an 
October evening aboard a steamer, 
which was scarcely first-rate in com- 
parison with ocean steamers in these 
days 

“My beloved, why should a single 
tear fall?" he whispered, nestling to 
her, and putting his arm about her. 
“ Think of what is before us — love — 
love — love ; it is our horizon. It en- 
compasses us. We stand in the center 
and look out — out — out ! We travel on 
and on, but it is still around us, a ring 
of horizon — ah, a ring — the only ring 
that is sacred — the horizon circle of 
love — such love as ours, my beloved ! " 

But she continued weeping, with her 
hands pressed to her face, for a long 
time. When she ceased it was with the 
startling suddenness of cessation of a 
thunderstorm, and it did not appear as 
if his comforting words had anything 


I 


XLbc Sale of a Soul, 17 

to do with the end at which they 
aimed. 

“ Why should I be a girl — a fool ? ** 
she said, as though she meant it to be 
understood that she regarded the words 
as synonymous. “ And yet — and yet — 
it was the same way in the train ; I 
could not help it. I suppose there are 
some times in one’s life when one is not 
accountable for one’s tears, or, perhaps, 
one’s laughter. The first five years, 
— well, they were not all wretched 
years — now and again ” 

“ My dearest, don’t let your mind 
wander down that desolate region of 
the past. Think of the future. It will 
not be that you shall have some joyous 
moments — it will not be ‘now and 
again,’ but always — love always, 
Agnes.” 

“ I know it, I know it.” There was 
actually a note of sadness in her voice. 
It was sufficient to tell him that she w^as 
thinking of the past and not of the 
future, which he had pictured for her 
with the swift brush of an artist. He 
was an artist in the temperament of 


1 8 XLbc Sale of a SouL 

woman ; he had long ago passed out of 
the period of pupilage. He felt a 
trifle disheartened. It is undoubtedly 
dispiriting to the man who works the 
dissolving views projected with a lime- 
light upon a screen, if his young 
friends insist on dwelling upon the 
scenic effect of the last slide, instead 
of becoming enraptured over the one 
which he is so vividly describing. “ I 
believe in you, and I know my own 

heart,” she continued ; “ but still 

Shall I ever forget the Homestead ? I 
know every tree around it and on the 
hillslope above it. And then — then — 
Jim, poor Jim ! — there never was a fox 
terrier like Jim — he saw me off and 
wanted to come, too. I should have 
dearly liked to bring him with me. 
And Ronald, the collie, he looked up 
so mournfully at me as I bade him 
good-by. I actually started, he seemed 
to know so well. And Ruby and 
Cora, the little setters ” 

“ Dogs, my dearest ! You shall have 
the best dogs that money can buy.” 

For an artist of the temperament of 


I 


Zbc Sale ot a Soul* 


19 


woman, to make such a mistake as to 
promise a woman new dogs for old, was 
surely astounding. Still, when a lover 
is walking on the heights with love, it is 
very disheartening for him to observe 
the woman whom he loves strolling 
through the valley with a fox terrier 
and other dogs at her heels. 

Poor Jim ! poor Jim ! " she said. 

When he comes up to my dressing- 
room in the morning and finds that I 
am not there " 

Once more her tears began to flow. 
The man looked on silently. He be- 
gan to feel that in reading the book of 
woman he must have omitted a chapter. 
He could not understand how a woman 
could run away from a husband, with a 
high head, and yet weep piteous tears 
at the thought of a fox terrier’s scrap- 
ing at the door of an empty room. 

“ Ah, I am no more than a girl ! ” 
she said at last, wiping her eyes. ** I 
have set out on the new way — the way 
to a new world, and I must not have 
a thought of the past — the miserable 
past.” 


20 


XTbe Sale of a Soul* 


“ He never understood you," said 
Stuart Forrest. “ He never knew the 
soul that he might have drawn closer to 
his own." 

“ That was it," she cried. “ I never 
was to him a real companion. He 
would not allow me to be a true com- 
panion to him. Oh, he never knew me 
— never understood me ! One day I 
went into his study and offered to help 
him ; he was preparing a speech on 
some simple question that everyone 
understands — the need for bimetallism 
in the currency, I think it was, or per- 
haps the rural exodus. I told him that 
I was anxious to help him, and he said, 
with a laugh, ‘ You can help me ma- 
terially ; see that the mutton doesn't 
come to the table quite so raw as it was 
the day before yesterday.’ That was 
how he responded to my attempt to be 
a true wife to him." 

“ He has only himself to blame for 
what has come about," said Mr. Forrest, 
in the accents of conviction. 

“ If he had only responded to me as 
a true husband would have done, — a 


I 


Zbc Sale ot a Soul, 


21 


husband who understood the nature of 
the wife whom he had taken to him- 
self, — all my life might have been 
changed,” said she ; “ but when he 
spoke as he did to me, what was left 
for me, I ask you, my dear friend ? ” 

He shook his head sadly. 

“ I perceived from the very first how 
you stood apart — you and he^ * I saw 
that there was nothing in common be- 
tween you. Good God, Agnes ! could 
he expect that you were to live with 
him on those terms ? Did he fancy 

that such a soul as yours Oh, there 

is no need to recapitulate that old tale 
of misery ! Surely of all forms of 
wretchedness in the world the misery 
of marriage is the most deplorable — a 
marriage that is only one because a cer- 
tain registration form has been signed 
by a man and a woman.” 

“ There is no need to recall all that 
terrible past. It is cast behind me for 
evermore. The dead past must bury its 
dead. I have trusted you. You have 
understood me. I have placed my 
future in your hands.” 


22 


Zbc Sale ot a Soul. 


“ And it shall be bright — I swear it ! 
But I do not need to make any asseve- 
ration, any promise to you, my beloved. 
If I understand you, assuredly you 
have always understood me ! ” 

“ That is the bond between us, 
Stuart ; I feel it hourly. To be under- 
stood — that is what we long for, we 
women. That lightens our labors. 
Lightens them ? annihilates them, I 
should say ; for there is no woman alive 
who would not rejoice to work day and 
night for one whom she loves, because 
she knows that he understands her. I 
thank God that we were brought together 
before it was too late. Even such a 
husband as mine was unable to crush in 
me all the capacity to love.” 

“ And all your love is mine, my 
darling ? ” 

“ All ! all ! I know myself, and I 
know you.” 

She gave him her hand. He pressed 
it. He would have liked to put his 
arms about her, and hold her to him, — 
he had never yet done so, — but since 
they had begun to talk, several of the 


I 


XLbc Sale of a Soul* 


23 


passengers had come on deck, and 
were strolling about, muffled in a variety 
of wraps ; but all apparently with the 
open eyes and attentive ears of saloon 
passengers aboard an ocean liner dur- 
ing their first hours on deck together. 
He had agreed with her that she was 
not to take his name while aboard the 
steamer — that, in fact, they were to be 
nothing more than friends until the 
steamer landed ; so that if he had ven- 
tured to put his arms about her before 
the lights on the Cheshire coast had 
quite dwindled away, the effect upon 
the other passengers would probably 
have been indescribable. 

As she left him and turned toward 
the door of the companion, he could not 
avoid feeling not only that he had made 
a great mistake in appointing an ocean 
steamer as the agency by which they 
were to leave the country together, but 
also that, in choosing that portion of 
the steamer for their first interview 
aboard, he had erred greatly. He 
should have made himself fully ac- 
qainted with the habits and customs of 


24 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


the passengers and their favorite quar- 
ters of resort aboard the steamer, so 
as to give himself a chance of em- 
bracing — well, whatever opportunity 
might be afforded him of winning the 
favor of the young woman whom he 
had persuaded to throw in her lot 
with his. 

He wondered, as he lit a cigar and 
began pacing the deck, when she had 
disappeared down the companion stairs, 
if she was as sensible as he was of 
the magnitude of his error which 
made it impracticable for him to put 
his arms about her. His experi- 
ence of womankind had led him to 
place what, perhaps, other persons not 
quite so fully informed, might con- 
sider a fictitious importance upon his 
omission. Great Heavens ! had he 
spent so many years in the study of 
women only to become irritated with 
himself for not having been clever 
enough to foresee the possibility of his 
situation with the woman who had just 
been by his side, developing up to the 
point where a clasp and a kiss — per- 


Zbc Sale of a SouL 25 

haps an avalanche of kisses — became 
the logical climax ? 

A portion of their conversation had 
been in regard to the right understand- 
ing of a woman by a man — perhaps 
the husband of that woman. She had 
practically admitted that she had confi- 
dence in his, Stuart Forrest’s, capacity 
to understand her ; and yet it was this ca- 
pacity on his part which led him to feel 
that she had left his side feeling that he 
was — well, not exactly a fool ; he could 
not conceive his ever being regarded 
by a woman as a fool ; but certainly 
clumsy — as clumsy as, say, a husband. 

To fancy that the logical climax of 
all that talk about her being misunder- 
stood ; about her high aims in life ; 
about the poet Shelley, and about her 
own soul, was the clasp and the kiss 
which were not forthcoming, might 
seem to some persons to be on the 
verge of the ridiculous. 

Great Heavens ! Had his knowledge 
of women led him to believe that the 
best way of showing a woman that you 
understand her is to kiss her? Was it 


26 


Zbc Sale of a SouL 


his belief that the logical and the ex- 
pected climax of much dialogue on the 
subject of the soul of a woman is the 
kiss ? 

He had strolled away to a part of the 
deck very far aft, and out of the sphere 
of influence of the electric light. A 
boat was slung within the bulwarks, and 
completed the scheme of obscuration. 
Now, why had not he had sufficient 
forethought to lead her to this grateful 
shade for their conversation ? Had he 
done so he would not have been over- 
come by his self-reproaches on account 
of his omission ; for no passengers were 
promenading on this deck. 

He stood there for a moment looking 
out over the sea, then he turned round. 

She was coming toward him. He 
knew her figure, though her head was 
bent and she walked with an unsteadi- 
ness that was not due to the motion of 
the steamer. It almost seemed as if 
she were staggering. 

His first thought was that he would now 
have a chance of repairing his omission. 
Yes, he understood her. He threw 


I 


^be Sale of a Soul, 


27 


away his cigar and took a few rapid 
steps toward her, with a half- whispered 
exclamation of passion. She clutched 
at his arm, and then he felt how she 
was trembling. She gasped. Some 
seconds passed before she was able to 
speak. 

What did he hear her say ? 

“ He is here — here — aboard this 
steamer ! ” 

Was she mad? He staggered back 
from her. 

“ Good God ! ” he whispered. He 
stood looking at her. The place was 
not so dark but that he could see her 
face. It was deathly pale. He had 
meant that at this moment it should be 
rose-red. 

There was a silence of some moments. 
He saw that she was looking eagerly, 
anxiously, fore and aft. 

“ You mean that he — he — your hus- 
band ” 

“ I went into my cabin. I returned 
to the saloon where I had seen the 
stewardess a few minutes before, and 
there I saw him. He stood at the foot 


28 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


of the longest table — the electric lamp 
was just above his head. Oh, there was 
no mistake on my part — no mistake ! He 
is here.” 

Again she sent eager glances up and 
down the deck. Her head was bent 
forward. Her hands were locked to- 
gether in an agony of expectation. 

“ It is impossible ! Did you not say 
that he had gone to London three days 
ago ? Did he speak to you ? Oh, you 
must have been mistaken ! ” 

“ No, no,” she said, in a fearful 
whisper. “ He did not speak ; I stood 
there as though I had become part of 
the cabin floor — I stood there staring at 
him. He did not speak. He only 
looked at me. I did not faint, but I 
could not stir for some minutes.” 

He drew a long breath. He had 
heard of ghosts — especially the ghosts 
of living people — appearing at oppor- 
tune moments before the eyes of persons 
whose nerves were strung to the highest 
possible tension. He was, as all sensi- 
ble men are, a profound believer in the 
appearance of ghosts — especially of liv- 


\ 


I 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


29 


ing people — before the eyes of their 
nearest and dearest friends whose nerves 
are overstrung. When men whose 
nerves were beyond suspicion told him 
of having entertained visitants from 
another world, he also believed — yes, 
that they had dined incautiously. 

“ My beloved,’' he said, taking her 
clasped hands in both his own : ** my 
best beloved ! You have gone through 
too much for even so brave and true a 
woman as I know you to be. You have 
overtaxed your strength. Let me help 

you down the companion. Brandy 

Oh, I insist ! I am your guardian now." 

“ Are you ? are you ? " said she. 
There was a huskiness in her whisper. 
“ Are you ? There he is — he is coming 
toward us." 

And so he was. 

Stuart Forrest looked in the direction 
which she indicated. He did not see 
how she gave a hurried glance behind 
her, over the bulwarks, or he might 
have held her hands more firmly instead 
of letting them drop ; for her glance 
was the wild glance of a hunted creature 


30 


Zbc Sale ot a Soul. 


who sees only one refuge from its pur- 
suers. He had no voice to utter the 
exclamation that rose to his lips ; for 
he saw that she was right : the man who 
was walking toward them was Claude 
Hadley, her husband. 

He came up quite easily and naturally. 
He was smoking a full-flavored cigar. 
How idiotic it was, Stuart felt, that at 
that moment — perhaps the supreme 
moment of his life — the one engrossing 
reflection that he had was that the cigar 
was a Carolina, of probably — but upon 
this point he had some little doubt — the 
1890 crop ! 

“ Dear me, Forrest ! ” said Mr. Had- 
ley, stopping with a half-puzzled expres- 
sion on his face, — there was sufficient 
light to reveal it to Stuart Forrest and 
Agnes Hadley, — “ dear me ! is it pos- 
sible that you are aboard this steamer 
also ? Well, well, like ourselves, I sup- 
pose you are anxious to escape the hor- 
rors of an English November. After 
all, the coincidence is not remarkable : 
the West India voyage is becoming more 
popular every year, and deservedly so, in 


I 


^bc Sale of a Soul. 31 

my opinion. The islands are exquisite. 
But I thought you were a hunting man, 
Forrest. Ah ! you’re going in for big- 
ger game this year, are you ? ” — the man 
laughed as he spoke. “ But in that case, 
you’ll have to go further, you know — 
Brazil. What do you say to a run up 
the Amazon ? My dear,” — he turned 
to his wife quite blandly and with that 
air of guardianship which distinguishes 
the Good Husband, — “ my dear, I notice 
that you have shivered twice within the 
past minute ” — and so she had. “ Are 
you sure that that wrap is sufficiently 
warm for you ? Oh, yes, it’s sufficiently 
becoming ; but warm ? The west 
wind, though the breath of autumn’s 
being, according to Shelley, is treacher- 
ous. Shelley as a poet was daring ; 
Shelley as a man and a house- 
holder Ah, you are going down ! 

You are quite right, my dear. Your 
cabin door is exactly opposite to mine, 
you know, of course. My arm. We 
are beginning to feel the choppy seas 
where the Channel currents meet. 
That’s the Northwest Light-ship.” 


32 


^Tbe Sale of a Soul. 


She took his arm. She could not 
avoid doing so. They went along the 
deck together, as the husband and wife 
were accustomed to promenade in the 
early sixties — before she had been born. 

Stuart Forrest watched them. He 
•could hear the husband genially point- 
ing out to the wife the various lights of 
the coast, and possibly — for Mr. Hadley 
was an extremely well-informed man — 
acquainting her with the exact candle 
power developed by the dioptric lens 
and its modifications. Then they both 
passed into the companion, and he saw 
them no more that night. 

After a dumb space Mr. Stuart For- 
rest said, “ D nation ! " 

And that is exactly the word which 
the devil says when he has good 
grounds for believing that a human 
soul has found salvation. 

A man and the devil occasionally look 
at an incident, in which they have a 
common interest, from the same stand- 
point. For if there is a good deal of the 
devil about a man, there is assuredly a 
good deal of a man about the devil. 


t 


CHAPTER III. 


She had shivered twice while her 
husband had been speaking. Stuart 
Forrest had noticed it, as had also her 
husband. But it was not she who had 
shivered when her husband had intro- 
duced the name of the poet Shelley ; 
it was Mr. Forrest who had shivered. 
He could not refrain from that recogni- 
tion of the genius of Mr. Hadley. The 
genius of a man who was able to per- 
ceive that the name of the poet Shelley 
had been introduced in the course of 
any conversation that he, Forrest, might 
have had with Mrs. Hadley previous to 
the arrival of her husband, bordered 
on the diabolic. That was the opinion 
of Stuart Forrest. He also felt that, 
clever though he knew himself to be, he 
could not pretend to such cleverness as 
Mr. Hadley had displayed on this point, 
at any rate. 

And yet he, Forrest, had managed 


33 


34 


tibc Sale of a Soul. 


to induce the wife of that man of supe- 
rior cleverness to leave her husband, 
and throw in her lot with himself — the 
man of lesser cleverness. 

This reflection had, of course, in it 
the elements of consolation ; though 
not such consolation as would stand 
analysis or the test of time. Even 
before Stuart Forrest had paced the 
deck half a dozen times, he began to 
feel that he needed for his own comfort 
a stronger stimulant than was afforded 
by the reflection that he had been 
adroit enough to get Claude Hadley’s 
wife to meet him and to put her hand 
in his — with a word or two (following 
his lead) about Shelley and a^ woman’s 
soul — aboard a steamer bound for the 
West Indies. 

He had been looking forward to this 
voyage for some weeks ; in fact, ever 
since that day when, after dining at the 
expense of Claude Hadley, at Claude 
Hadley’s house, he had assured Claude 
Hadley’s wife that he loved her, that he 
understood her, that he sympathized 
with her unfortunate position as a wife 


I 


XLbc Sale of a Soul. 


35 


so deeply as to compel him to offer to 
devote the remainder of his life to her. 
Ever since that day when she had 
allowed her hand to rest in his, telling 
him that she believed it was her duty to 
herself, to her own womanhood, to her 
sense of what love really meant, to her 
sense of what constituted a true mar- 
riage in the sight of Heaven (with an 
appealing glance of violet eyes to 
a chubby little painted cupid on the 
painted ceiling of the drawing room), 
nay, her duty to the man who called 
himself her husband, to leave him and 
the home with which he had provided 
her — ever since that day, Stuart Forrest 
had been looking forward to this voyage 
to the West Indies. 

He had not, of course, been able to 
arrange for the voyage on that day ; 
but he had good grounds — it has 
already been said that his experience 
of women was wide and varied — for 
believing that he would be permitted 
by Mrs. Hadley to arrange for a voyage 
in some direction. He had not de- 
ceived himself. She had written to him 


3 ^ 


Ztc Sale of a Soul, 


in a strain which she very likely thought 
was quite original. Many women do 
believe, in all good faith, that they 
possess an individuality of their own 
which entitles them to be classed quite 
apart from other women. But it so 
happened that the man with whom Mrs. 
Hadley was opening a correspondence, 
had in his possession at that moment 
quite a number of letters written in 
precisely the same strain as that which 
she adopted, and from the very same 
standpoint. 

He had also had in his possession 
from time to time other letters written 
in the same strain, but he had been 
compelled to return them to the writers 
in order to get back some that he had 
written in reply. This exchange of 
prisoners, so to speak, had been the 
natural sequence of sundry campaigns. 

It may be taken for granted that he 
lost no time in sending Mrs. Hadley a 
reply to her first letter. He had only 
to satisfy himself as to the exact points 
upon which she had laid emphasis, in 
order to compose the answer which he 


Sale of a Soul. 


37 


knew could not fail to be effective. He 
had written many such letters during 
the previous ten years of his life ; so 
that there would have been no excuse 
for his bungling over this one. He 
rattled it off, paying due respect, of 
course, to what she believed to be her 
individuality of thought. That refer- 
ence of hers to the great truth that it 
was love which imparted to marriage its 
undoubtedly sacred character — that the 
laying on of episcopal hands after the 
ceremony in the church meant nothing, 
was, he felt sure she supposed, a strik- 
ing piece of evidence in favor of her 
individuality of thought. But was it ? 
He knew better. The same beautiful 
thought — and he felt that it was a beau- 
tiful thought ; he questioned very much 
if he had ever felt its beauty more 
strongly than he did on receiving Mrs. 
Hadley's letter — was enshrined in at 
least three letters which he had pre- 
served in a certain compartment of his 
desk that he kept for such communi- 
cations. 

Then there was a passage in which 


38 


XLbc Sale of a Soul, 


she frankly acknowledged the need of 
every woman for the sympathy of a man. 
.She confessed her weakness. Alas ! 
that it should be decreed that a woman’s 
life, to be lived in all its fullness and 
completeness, must be joined to that of 
a man ! She saw clearly that that was 
nature’s plan, and she sometimes had 
doubts as to its justice ; still she felt 
that it was her duty to yield to it. She 
did not envy those strong-minded 
women who were content to live their 
lives without the sympathy of man and 
his companionship. They might be 
strong-minded, but, alas ! it was not 
her mind but her heart that was the 
dominant influence in her life. Love — 
love — love, that was all she could give 
a man ; and love — love — love, was all 
she asked in return. 

Was there not some individuality in 
that thought ? 

Well, though he knew that he could 
at a moment’s notice lay his hand on at 
lea^t four letters containing almost iden- 
tical paragraphs, still he felt impressed 
by the womanliness of the confession. 


Zhc Sale of a SouL 


39 


Oh, there could be no doubt about it : 
she was the one woman in the world 
for him ! He had been deceived upon 
previous occasions, when he believed 
that he had found the one woman for 
him ; for though marriages are well 
known to be made in heaven, it is left 
for men and women to supplement the 
efforts of a well-meaning Providence to 
bring them together. Every Jack may 
have his Jill waiting somewhere for him, 
by the benevolent forethought (as both 
Jack and Jill regard it) of Providence ; 
but the discovery of Jill is largely left 
to the intelligence — to be more exact, 
the heart — of Jack himself ; and fre- 
quently he makes the most curious mis- 
takes as to the identity of the lady for 
whom he professes to be seeking. 

Stuart Forrest had made some mis- 
takes of this type in the course of his 
life. But as he carried his letter ad- 
dressed to Mrs. Hadley to the nearest 
pillar-box, — it suggested to her the voy- 
age to the West Indies, — he felt that he 
was deserving of the greatest commiser- 
ation on account of the number of times 


40 


Zbc Sale of a SouL 


he had been deceived : that was how he 
put it ; deceived in the women whom he 
had fancied he loved with a love that 
would triumph over time. He actually 
felt that he was a man to be greatly 
pitied on account of these deceptions. 

He actually felt that Providence owed 
him a good turn for all he had gone 
through in his attempts to discover the 
one woman whom he now flattered him- 
self he had found ; and, if Agnes Had- 
ley would only agree to take this voyage 
with him to the West Indies, he felt that 
he would be disposed to take a generous 
view of the past so far as Providence 
was concerned. 

Agnes was the one woman whom the 
world held for him. He felt that he 
had not been led to make a mistake this 
time. The love that beat in his heart 
at the very thought of her beauty, her 
grace, the long lashes of her violet eyes, 
was true love. If she would agree to 
go on that voyage with him he would 
show her how true was his love — how 
unselfish. He would compass her with 
sweet observances. He would devote 


I 


ITbe Sale ot a SouL 


41 


his life to her. He might even go so far 
as to marry her in the course of time. 

Slip went his letter into the mouth of 
the pillar-box, and his eyes were actually 
a little moist as he thought of his own 
generosity, not merely in regard to 
Providence, but in respect of woman- 
kind. Many another man who had been 
so frequently deceived as he had been 
in matters of love, would have become 
a cynic, a misogynist having no further 
confidence in woman ; but he was prov- 
ing in the most practical way that he 
had not yet given up all hope of woman ; 
and he could not but feel that this was 
very handsome on his part. 

He had already induced two women 
to leave their husbands and take voy- 
ages with him ; one of them had, a little 
later on, run away from him with another 
man — a man who had made a million 
or so over South African diamonds, and 
the other had been found dead in her 
bed with an empty chloral bottle beside 
her. He had been deceived in regard 
to both these women ; they had disap- 
pointed him, but yet he had not become 


42 


Ube Sale ot a Soul. 


either cynical or a misogynist. No, on 
the contrary, he was ready to take away 
another woman from her husband, and 
undergo the inconvenience, if not posi- 
tive danger, of a voyage to the West 
Indies for her sake. 

And it was the consideration of his 
own generosity that had caused his eyes 
to become moist as he walked away 
from the pillar-box in which he had 
deposited his letter to Mrs. Hadley. 

Well, she had agreed to leave her hus- 
band. She wrote that she felt it to be 
her duty to take this step, and to join 
Stuart Forrest aboard the steamship 
Demerara. She was to take her cabin 
under the name of Mrs. Clarence, — her 
name had been Clarence before she had 
married, — and she and Stuart Forrest 
were to be nothing more than acquaint- 
ances, so long as they were aboard the 
steamship together. When they reached 
land her life was to be in his hands. So 
she wrote to him, adding : 

“ My beloved, it is not merely my 
heart that I have made over to you — it 


Zbc Sale of a Soul* 


43 


is my soul. You have heard people say 
of women that they would sell their 
souls to accomplish something. Well, 
our going away together is the sale of a 
soul — my soul. What shall be given 
to a woman in exchange for her soul ? 
Only one thing — Love. You will give 
me love, my beloved — the love which 
makes life to be life and not prolonged 
death — spiritual death.” 

Well, they had met aboard the Deme- 
rara^ and now Stuart Forrest was pac- 
ing the deck alone, murmuring every 
now and again that ugly word which has 
already been attributed to him. He 
felt that perhaps the soul which had 
been made over to him might eventually 
go to another customer, though he pro- 
fessed himself quite ready to carry out 
the original terms suggested by the 
vendor. Perhaps it might even be 
withdrawn from sale. 


CHAPTER IV. 


Mr. Hadley put his wife into her 
cabin. By a remarkable coincidence — 
which he had taken care to arrange for 
beforehand at the shipping office — the 
door of her cabin and the door of his 
faced each other in the narrow passage, 
on each side of which the passengers’ 
cabins were placed. 

You are strangely excited, my dear,” 
said Mr. Hadley as he showed her into 
her cabin. “You have no brandy? 
Good Lord ! How could you think of 
facing a night in a choppy Channel with- 
out brandy ? And yet I felt persuaded 
that you wouldn’t have any. That was 
why I brought your flask as well as my 
own. Wait for one moment and I’ll get 
it for you.” 

He opened the door to the left of the 
passage and switched on the electric 
light in his cabin. She stood there, 
meek, dumb. She had a glimpse into 


44 


Zbc Sale of a Soul, 


45 


his cabin, and saw how comfortable he 
had made it for himself. He had been 
making it comfortable all the time that 
she had been talking about woman’s 
soul and the poet Shelley, on deck. 
That was her first reflection when she 
perceived how he had hung a small 
book-shelf within easy reach of his 
bunk, and when she recognized the 
backs of a number of his favorite vol- 
umes. He had actually taken the 
trouble to make a selection from his 
library before leaving home in pursuit 
of her ! 

What could she think of a man who 
could be so calculating as to provide 
himself with the means of recreation or 
mental improvement before setting out 
to intercept his wife’s flight with an- 
other man ? There on the sofa was a 
pile of the latest blue-books : she saw 
them — she saw where one had been 
folded across at an open page. That 
was the one which he had been reading 
in the train, she knew. He had pur- 
sued her, and while in the act of pursuit, 
he had been making marginal notes on a 


46 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


blue-book, on the subject of, perhaps, 
the Education of Pauper Lunatics ; 
that was a subject which he had made 
his own. He had his theories regard- 
ing it. 

Then he brought out a little silver 
flask which she had received as a wed- 
ding present from one of her sisters. 

“ Yes, I feared that you might forget 
the brandy,” said he, giving her the 
flask. “ Don’t be afraid of a large 
dose ; then lie down at once, and the 
chances are that in the morning you 
will be all right. Heavens ! would you 
run the chance of spoiling the interest 
and the romance of a voyage to strange 
lands by an attack of sea-sickness ? 
Now, good-night ! ” 

He put his lips to her forehead. She 
stood there, white, dumb, overpowered. 
She suffered him to kiss her. She felt 
as helpless before him as though he 
were the embodiment of fate. What 
could she say to a man who referred 
quite blandly to the interest and ro- 
mance attached to the incident of her 
running away with another man ? 




Zhc Sale ot a SouL 


47 


She went into her cabin and shut the 
door. She poured half the contents of 
the flask into the cup and swallowed 
them. Then she undressed and went 
to sleep without a tear — without even a 
prayer. 

A few hours later, however, she 
awoke suddenly, and after a minute or 
two of astonishment, recollected where 
she was. She was aboard a steamer. 
Beneath her feet there were probably 
fifty fathoms of cold, gray sea. Then 
she remembered that she had not said 
her prayers before going to sleep. She 
repaired the omission now. 

She was a woman. 

But Mr. Hadley, after leaving his 
wife at the door of her cabin, relighted 
his cigar and went on deck again. The 
captain of the Demerara was an old 
friend of his. He had taken a voyage 
to South America with him some years 
before, and had obtained from him 
such information as had made his 
speech in the House of Commons on 
the subject of the rule of the road at 


48 


XLbc Sale of a Soul, 


sea and its mysteries seem a marvel of 
erudition. He now made his way to 
the captain’s side in the snug bridge 
shelter, and brought with him a very 
large cigar, full-flavored and possessing 
other qualities which made it worthy 
of the acceptance of a master mariner, 
with whom Havana had for several 
years been a port of call. 

The gift was received with due 
solemnity, and the probable year of 
its birth discussed for some moments 
while it was being petted between the 
finger and thumb of the recipient, and 
held under his nose with analytical, 
pensive, half-closed eyes ; for your 
tobacco-leaf critic ever shows himself 
appreciative of the sublime, and is care- 
ful of his words. The captain spoke a 
few pathetic words regarding the great 
Morales — great in years, when true 
greatness was difficult to achieve, owing 
to the craving of the dealers for the 
immature, and the jaunty indifference 
of the amateur consumer, who is easily 
deceived by a collar of gold foil and a 
fancy name. 


» 


^Tbe Sale of a Soul, 


49 


Mr. Hadley shook his head and of- 
fered the mariner his cigar-cutter. The 
captain accepted it and sighed. His 
sigh was that of the chaplain prepara- 
tory to the fall of the guillotine. Then 
came the click of the knife. 

“You were not deceived in this 
brand, my dear sir,” said the captain, 
after a few silent moments, in which he 
was raised above the clouds — tempor- 
arily. “ You are not the man to be 
taken in. Half a dozen boxes, did you 
say ? I congratulate you — respectfully. 
But for God’s sake don’t give them 
away.’’ 

“Trust me. Only my best friends.” 

The captain put a finger to the peak 
of his cap. 

“ I wonder if you have any ideas of 
your own on the subject of a steers- 
man’s light,” said Mr. Hadley. 

“ I have some very definite ideas re- 
garding a steersman’s light, sir ; and I 
can give you some notes of my own that 
tend to prove that nine- tenths of the 
most disastrous of the collisions of 
recent years might have been pre- 


50 XLbc Sale of a Soul. 

vented, had each ship known the course 
that the other was steering.” 

“You’re the man for me, Captain 
Easeden,” said Mr. Hadley. 

For the next two hours they stood 
together looking out through plate glass 
at the tumbling waters of the Channel, 
their topic being the necessity for a 
signal light to indicate any change of 
course made by a steamship under 
way. Mr. Hadley thought he saw 
his way clearly to cause the President 
of the Board of Trade a considerable 
amount of worry during the next session 
of Parliament on this very question ; 
and so he had, while sitting in the 
compartment next to that which was 
occupied by his wife — though she was 
unaware of his proximity — in the train 
that bore them to Liverpool, resolved 
that the voyage should be a profitable 
one so far as the steersman’s light ques- 
tion was concerned. 

Mr. Hadley was a very practical man, 
and people said he would be in the next 
Government. Yes, if he only annoyed 
the President of the Board of Trade 


I 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 5 ^ 

sufficiently he would certainly be in 
the next Government. 

Mrs. Hadley, when she awoke within 
an hour of the ringing of the breakfast- 
bell, to receive from the hands of her 
attendant a cup of coffee, felt that 
whatever interest and romance might 
be associated with this voyage — and it 
seemed to her that certain incidents 
with which she had become acquainted 
during the first hour of the voyage con- 
tained the elements both of interest and 
romance — would not be destroyed by 
any foolish sea-sickness on her part. 

Was it possible that she felt some- 
thing akin to gratitude to her husband 
for his thoughtfulness in regard to that 
brandy ? Stuart Forrest had, to be 
sure, suggested brandy ; but he had 
not brought any with him. 

As she swallowed her coffee she felt 
a little irritated at the promptness with 
which she had yielded to that impulse 
of gratitude to the man whose clever- 
ness had frustrated her hopes of being 
supremely happy with another man — a 


5 - 


^be Sale of a SouL 


man who understood her, though h^ 
had failed to bring that brandy. 

She now felt strong, self-possessed, 
ready to face her husband in an inter- 
view which she perceived to be inevit- 
able. As she lay awake before dress- 
ing she wondered how it was that she 
had been foolish enough to fancy that 
she could run away from her home 
without her husband’s becoming aware 
of her flight, and being behind her. 
She had had so many examples of his 
cleverness it seemed strange to her now 
that she could ever have believed her- 
self — even though supported by the 
man who understood her — capable of 
escaping from her husband. He might 
not understand her ; but he had proved 
himself quite equal to understanding 
how to frustrate her plans. 

And then she went on to wonder how 
she had been weak enough to allow him 
to take possession of her as he had 
done, when he had walked up to her on 
the deck the previous night. What had 
she been thinking about when she had 
shown herself so ready to play the part 


t 


TLbc Sale of a Soul, 


53 


of the Obedient Wife to his Good Hus- 
band, — that was the part which he had 
played, — taking his arm quite meekly 
and suffering him to kiss her on the 
forehead ? 

“ What ! ” she muttered. “ What ! 
Am I nothing more than a mere woman 
after all ? ” 

The very possibility of such a ques- 
tion being put to her was humiliating. 
No, no ; anything but that — anything 
but that ! Whatever she might be, no 
one had the right to accuse her of being 
nothing more than a mere woman. No, 
she might have had her moments of 
weakness, — as a matter of fact, she had 
had several such moments, — but they 
were past ; she was herself once more, 
and ready to take up her stand against 
her husband. She would face him 
without faltering. She would, she felt, 
have strength to let him know that it 
was quite impossible for her ever again 
to associate her life with his. She 
would tell him that though he had been 
clever enough to frustrate her design, 
so far as escaping from him was con- 


54 


Zhc Sale of a Soul, 


cerned, he was utterly powerless to 
bring her back to his side. He might 
compel her to return to his house ; but 
he would not be strong enough to make 
her look upon him as her husband so 
long as she lived or as he lived. There 
was a great gulf between them — a gulf 
deeper and blacker than that deep dark 
sea on which she was, now and again, 
permitted to look by the rolling of the 
steamer. 

Yes, she felt ready to face him at any 
moment. She was prepared to defend 
the step which she had taken. It would, 
of course, be within the bounds of possi- 
bility that she would not be able to 
make him understand her position as 
she herself understood it ; his incapacity 
in this respect would only be part and 
parcel of his general incapacity to under- 
stand her. But that meant nothing to 
her now. The nature of truth is not 
changed because men fail to appreciate 
what is true. She felt that she had 
passed several years of her life acquir- 
ing the knowledge of a great truth, and, 
having acquired it, she was not likely to 


> 


XLbc Sale of a Soul 55 

relinquish it because her husband failed 
to appreciate its beauty. 

The Great Truth which she believed 
she had acquired was that Heaven had 
decreed that a marriage shall be- 
come automatically dissolved (in the 
sight of Heaven) so soon as the condi- 
tions under which it was originally con- 
tracted (in the sight of earth) undergo 
a change. 

She was twenty-four years of age, and 
her husband was thirty-five. 


CHAPTER V. 


The chief steward assigned to the 
lady whose name appeared on the pas- 
senger list as Mrs. Clarence, a place at 
the breakfast-table next to the young 
lady who had been noticed by Stuart 
Forrest in the companion while he was 
waiting for the arrival of Agnes Hadley. 
On her left was a gentleman who occu- 
pied an official position in Jamaica ; his 
wife, who was very much the grande 
dame^ was seated to the right of the 
captain’s chair at the head of the table. 
Mr. Hadley sat opposite this lady, so 
that he was not quite vis-a-vis with his 
wife. 

He greeted her as a friend across the 
table, and ventured to express the hope 
that she had managed to snatch an hour 
or two of sleep. She replied quite 
cordially that she had slept soundly all 
night, and had even an appetite for 


Zbc Sale ot a Soul, 


57 


breakfast. A complete appreciation of 
the Great Truth was by no means in- 
compatible with an exercise of cordi- 
ality between a husband and wife (in 
the sight of earth). Then Mr. Hadley 
glanced down the table to see where 
Stuart Forrest was sitting; but Stuait 
Forrest was not visible. Agnes also 
sent a glance around, her husband 
noticed ; nor did he fail to observe the 
little troubled expression which came to 
her face when her glance returned un- 
satisfied to the breakfast car/e. 

He wondered if it was possible that 
she fancied that Stuart Forrest had 
thrown himself overboard during the 
night. Was her imagination only equal 
to accounting for his absence on this 
hypothesis ? Had she never heard of 
mal de mer^ which sometimes attacks 
the most passionate lovers in preference 
to the most commonplace husbands ? 
Could she discriminate between men 
only so imperfectly as to fancy that 
Stuart Forrest was the type of man to 
commit suicide because circumstances 
over which he had no control had inter- 


58 ^Tbe Sale of a Soul, 

fered with the carrying out of his plans 
in regard to one woman ? 

He thought it well to divest him of 
the heroic in her eyes by inquiring of 
the steward, in a tone that was quite 
audible across the table, if Mr. Forrest 
was compelled to remain in the seclusion 
of his cabin ; and the steward, with 
a sadly sympathetic smile, — the smile 
which the steward assumes when ad- 
dressing a man with a plate of grilled 
chops in front of him, on the subject 
of the malady of a man groaning in a 
cabin, — replied that Mr. Forrest was 
suffering greatly. 

Ah, poor chap ! poor chap ! ” said 
Mr. Hadley. “ Don’t let him have any- 
thing but the driest champagne, Green- 
away. You have something pretty dry 
aboard, I hope.” 

The steward assured him, with great 
respect, that only the driest brands 
should be sent to Mr. Forrest when that 
gentleman might ring for wine. 

‘‘ But we hadn’t a bad night, by any 
means,” said the captain. 

“A mill-pond,” said Mr. Hadley. 


Zhc Sale of a Soul* 


59 


“ But still a mill-pond is sometimes too 
much for a person of imagination, who 
plays a little on the flute.” 

The words reached the ear of the 
captain only, and he gave a laugh. 
Agnes had some imagination, and she 
flushed at the sound of that laugh. Her 
husband knew that her imaginative 
resources, if not sufficient to supply the 
phrase which had caused the captain to 
laugh, were quite equal to bringing be- 
fore her the picture of a man with a 
face that suggested the Mongol rather 
than the Saxon, lying in his bunk with 
an empty champagne bottle or two be- 
side him, knocking their necks together 
in a very irresponsible fashion. 

That picture of the man with the 
yellowish face, not, however, altogether 
devoid of pale green, was the picture of 
the man to whom she should be looking 
for protection, had not the man with 
the plate of chops in front of him come 
aboard in good time on the previous 
evening. 

Claude Hadley perceived that he had 
not misjudged his wife’s resources of 


6o 


^bc Sale of a Soul. 


imagination, and he made a hearty 
breakfast. 

‘‘ Don’t go on deck just yet,” she 
said. 

She was waiting at the entrance to 
the passage as he came out of his 
cabin, having put on an overcoat and 
a cap. 

He removed the unlighted cigar from 
his mouth and stared at her inquiringly 
for some moments. 

“Very well; I’ll not go on deck just 
yet,” he said. “ But why not ? ” 

“ Because I wish to have a talk with 
you,” said she, in a steadfast voice. 
“ Let us go to the end of the saloon.” 

He followed her quite meekly. It 
might have occurred to some intelligent 
observers that he was a husband on his 
way to try and explain his conduct to 
an indignant wife, who had intercepted 
his flight with another woman. 

They walked on to the end of the 
saloon to the cross seats far removed 
from the line of cabins. In the dome 
skylight, above their heads, were a few 
palm plants. 


» 


XLbe Sale of a Soul, 6i 

** Now,” said he, “we can talk at our 
ease. I am so glad that you have not 
fallen a victim — to the sea-sickness, 
I mean, of course. You drank the 
brandy. Let me advise you never to 
travel without your flask. The worst 
does not always happen ; but it is safe 
to prepare for the worst. Isn’t that a 
sago palm above us ? I wonder how it 
survives the winter voyage.” 

“ I should like you to explain what 
you meant by following me,” she said, 
with some degree of sternness in her 
tone. 

She was actually taking her husband 
to task for not having allowed her to 
run away from him ! 

He perceived this and smiled. 

“ To be exact, my dear, I didn’t fol- 
low you ; I was in the compartment 
next to yours in the train,” he said, still 
smiling. “ But that does not obviate 
the necessity for an explanation, you 
will say. You are probably right. The 
only question is, should the explanation 
come from me or from you ? ” 

“ You know my position,” said she. 


62 


XLbc Sale of a Soul* 


“ You know that I left you because you 
are not my husband.” 

Oh ! I am not your husband ? ” 

“You are not — in the sight of 
Heaven.” 

“ Why drag Heaven into this busi- 
ness, Agnes ? Can’t you let your 
good old Heaven alone ? You’ll have 
enough of it by and by. So far as my 
experience and researches go I’m in- 
clined to believe that your high-toned 
friends are as anxious as the low-toned 
to avert the evil day — I mean the joyous 
day. We happen to be on earth now.” 

“ It is to Heaven I look for justifica- 
tion for my act, Claude, however op- 
posed it may be to the conventional 
standard of society. You are not my 
husband. I decline to live with you 
any longer.” 

“But you are anxious to live with 
someone else ? ” 

“ I will live with someone whom I 
love.” 

“ Will you ? How do you know that 
you love that someone else ? ” 

“ Ah ! if you knew what love is ! ” 


t 


^Tbe Sale of a SouL 


63 


“ If I did I might still ask you the 
question to which you have not replied. 
May I remind you that you once assured 
me that you loved me ? ” 

“ I was a girl, and I fancied that — 
that — you understood me.” 

“ I understood you to say that you 
loved me, and I believed you. We mar- 
ried on a basis of love, did we not ? ” 

“I was a girl — I did not know my 
own mind.” 

“ Your own mind, you say ; what 
about your heart ? ” 

“ I thank you for the correction. I 
should have said heart.” 

“ I think you should stick to the mind 
theory. I prefer it. The man who gave 
it as his impression that the heart is 
deceitful above all things, was as nearly 
inspired as any man with an ample ex- 
perience of women must be. When a 
woman wants to go to the devil she 
applies to her heart to show her the way 
and to equip her for the journey. It 
rarely fails her. It points out the direct 
route, and it makes a sale of her soul 
and chuckles over the bargain.” 


64 


XLbc Sale of a Soul» 


She gave a little start. How was it 
that he too made use of a phrase which 
she had employed in the most striking 
of her letters to Stuart Forrest ? She 
had referred to the sale of her soul ; 
and she felt certain that the phrase was 
an expressive one, and that its force 
would be appreciated by the man to 
whom it was addressed. And yet here 
was her husband employing it for his 
own purposes. 

The time for discussing such dis- 
tinctions is past, so far as you and I are 
concerned,” said she coldly, when she 
had recovered from her surprise. We 
have lived together for close upon five 
years, and yet you have never become 
more than superficially acquainted with 
me. You have, I admit, given me what 
women call a handsome allowance in 
addition to my own income ; you have 
never been absolutely unkind to me, — 
nay, you were kind to me, according to 
your lights ; but still we were strangers. 
You never understood me, Claude. 
That is why I have left you.” 

“ Great Heavens ! What was there to 




Zbc Sale of a SouI» 


65 


understand about you, my dear ? ” he 
cried. His voice was the voice of one 
who is amused, and this was very irri- 
tating to her. She was so very serious 1 
He did not seem to understand the 
situation. He was one of the actors in 
a tragedy, and all the time he was behav- 
ing as if it were a comedy, if not an 
actual farce. 

“ The fact of your putting such a 
question to me would of itself be suffi- 
cient to prove the truth of what I say : 
you have never understood me.” 

** Perhaps I have not,” said he, after 
a pause of considerable duration. 

Perhaps I have not. Why ? I wonder 
why.” 

“ You were never sufficiently in- 
terested in me to make the attempt,” 
she replied immediately. 

“ I was never otherwise than in- 
terested in you, Agnes. As a matter of 
fact, I’m interested in you just now — 
yes, immensely.” 

“ You have always looked on me as 
differing in no respect from other 
women.” 


66 


tibe Sale ot a Soul, 


^^You can scarcely say that, seeing 
that I married you and none of the 
other women." 

‘‘You should have married one of the 
other women. I wish you had.” 

“ I don’t. Neither do you. If I had 
married someone else you might have 
run away from a man who would not 
have understood you well enough to 
prevent you, and you would have been 
halfway to the devil by this time. How 
can you say that I didn’t understand you 
when I was able to travel in the next 
compartment to you all the way to 
Liverpool ? What about that brandy ? 
Good God ! if I hadn’t understood you, 
you would now be passing an agonizing 
morning after having passed an agoniz- 
ing night. Did he bring you brandy — 
he — the lover — the man who is now 
wishing that he had never seen your 
face, poor chap ? Poor devil ! he didn’t 
even bring brandy for himself, and you 
may be sure that he usually thinks of 
himself first. Does he understand 
you ? ” 

“ You do not, or you would not have 


Zbc Sale ot a SouL 


67 


followed me, believing that you would 
be able to persuade me to return with 
you.” 

“ I came in the next compartment to 
you to Liverpool because I am a man. 
Because you are mine — I am only talk- 
ing from the standpoint of earth, though 
you have introduced the phrase ‘ in the 
sight of Heaven.’ Did I not understand 
you ? Perhaps I did not. Is such a 
woman as you are a book written in a 
strange language the key to which has 
been lost ? ” 

“ The key — ah, the key ! ” 

“ Love, you will, of course, say ; and 
you will, of course, affirm that I never 
loved you or I should have understood 
you ; to be more exact, you would have 
felt that I understood you. But in the 
contract by which — in the eyes of earth 
— a man and a woman live together, is 
it essential only that the man should 
understand the woman ? What about 
the woman's understanding the man ? 
Is that to be a qualiti nigligeable ? Is 
the man to devote all his spare moments 
to the study of the woman in order that 


68 


xrbe Sale of a Soul* 


eventually — say, when she runs away 
with another man — he may understand 
her ; while she may make no effort to 
understand him, until — well, until he 
puts himself between her and the 
Bottomless Pit of Hell into which he 
sees her rushing with headlong speed ? 
Women such as you go to the Bottom- 
less Pit with their eyes turned toward 
Heaven and a text of Scripture in their 
mouths.” 

“ You have said enough ! ” she cried, 
with flashing eyes. ‘‘ You are only 
making more plain to me every moment 
that you know nothing whatever of my 
nature. Do you expect that you will 
prevail upon me to return to your house 
by the force of rhetoric ?” 

“ I’m not such a fool. I may know 
very little about women, but I’m not 
quite such a fool as to fancy that. The 
rhetoric of a lover may cause a woman 
to run away from her husband, but the 
rhetoric of a husband, plus reason and 
experience, never yet induced a wife to 
return to him. I did not ask you to 
give me any explanation at this time : 


V 


XLbc Sale ot a Soul. 69 

it was you who summoned me to this 
part of the saloon to lecture me upon 
my indiscretion in following you.” 

“ I asked you to come here in order 
that I might tell you at the outset of 
the voyage that nothing shall induce me 
to be your wife again. I have not 
taken this step without due considera- 
tion, without thought — will you believe 
me when I say, without prayer ? ” 

“ Of course I will believe you. Didn’t 
I say something just now about a text 
of Scripture ? Did you forget your 
Bible as well as your brandy ? ” 

Why did you follow me ? Why ? 
why ? Surely you should be glad of 
your freedom. What am I but a hin- 
drance to you in your work — a clog 
upon your ambition ? ” 

I am here with you because I am 
your husband and you are my wife. 
Oh, don’t repeat that phrase about the 
sight of Heaven — the bond of marriage 
is essentially one of earth ; it comes to 
an end the instant you mention Heaven. 
You should have brought that Bible, 
and you would see the assurance — it is 


70 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


not without comfort — that in Heaven 
there is no recognition of marriage. 
Yes, I am here because you are my 
wife, and because you have hitherto 
made no attempt to understand your 
husband. You do not understand him ; 
but you understand him far better than 
you do his wife. I am here because I 
have always loved you in spite of your 
phrases, and because there is nothing 
so good for the health as a sea voyage. 
You’ll know your husband, your lover, 
and yourself thoroughly before this 
voyage comes to an end, my dear. 
Don’t fancy that I ask you to avoid 
Mr. Stuart Forrest. I am not such a 
fool. Give him your attention as 
before — plenty of attention. He has 
never yet kissed you.” 

She flushed all over, and then became 
deathly pale as she looked at him with 
parted lips. She began to be afraid. 
How did this man know her secrets ? 

“ He has never kissed you, and he 
will never kiss you aboard this vessel,” 
Claude Hadley continued. “ You are 
one of those women who, so long as 


I 


Xlbc Sale of a SouL 


71 


they are under their husband’s roof, 
have too much self-respect to do more 
than correspond with a lover. But in 
a moment of irresponsibility they run 
away ; and then — well, then, if they are 
like you, they jump overboard on the 
last day of the voyage to that new life 
to which they fancy they have been 
looking forward — a life of love without 
shackles.” 

“ Oh ! ” 

“You turn your head away and there 
is a little smile on your lips. But as I 
spoke you felt a cold hand upon your 
heart — it tightened, and that was why 
you gave that little gasp. A man 
should not ask a woman to understand 
him, but only to understand herself. 
She usually understands him first ; he 
is so much easier, you know. You 
fancied yourself strong enough to rush 
into sin with Stuart Forrest ; but you 
didn’t call yourself Mrs. Forrest when 
you came aboard. A voyage lay be- 
tween you and the beginning of your 
new life. You would have talked with 
him daily of the joy of being under- 


72 


XLhc Sale ot a Soul* 


stood at last — of the glory of that new 
life which was to begin at the end 
of the voyage ; and on the last night of 
the voyage you would have come on 
deck and slipped quietly overboard.” 

She was staring at him with wide, in- 
dignant eyes ; but she was as pale as 
death — and as dumb. 

He looked at her curiously. They 
had left their seats under the palm 
plants, and were standing face to face 
at the end of the saloon. 

“ I wonder will you ever ask me to 
kill him ? ” said the husband in a 
whisper. 

She gave a little cry of horror, and 
raised both her hands in the instinct of 
averting a horrible sight. 

There was a long pause before he said : 

“ What you need is a good cry, my 
dear.” 

“What! I?” 

She gave him an indignant look at 
first, then she laughed in the face of 
the man who pretended to understand 
her, and yet fancied that her mood was 
one of tears. 


I 


XLbc Sale of a Soul* 


73 


‘‘ Stay here and have your cry,” said 
he. 

He left her at the end of the saloon, 
and went up the companion. She 
heard him strike his match at the top 
of the stairs. 

She laughed again. 

She was in the act of walking to her 
cabin when she heard the sound of a 
curious pattering on the companion 
stairs, and there whisked into the saloon 
a fox terrier. He saw her and went to 
her with a wriggling body and a frantic 
tail-stump. 

“ Jim, Jim, Jim, my Jim ! ” she cried 
out. She fell into a chair. He sprang 
upon her lap and was licking her face 
with delight, until he found that the 
tears which she was weeping over him 
were salt and unpalatable. 


CHAPTER VI. 


The steamship Demerara had slid 
into a parallel where smooth seas were 
overhung by fleckless skies, and the 
passengers in the saloon had begun to 
assimilate. Two days were quite suf- 
ficient to cause some of them, at any 
rate, to set about the duty of revising 
many of their most cherished convic- 
tions on some subjects of universal 
interest. The youth who had received 
the advice of his father with surprisingly 
good grace, in regard to the avoidance 
of female society, so far as was consist- 
ent with life in a world where females 
are not merely tolerated, but occasion- 
ally encouraged, was devoting all his 
time to the invention of pretexts for 
conversing with the young girl with the 
large eyes whose luster became a most 
profitable subject of discussion. The 


74 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


75 


youth was supposed to be devoted to a 
study of the Spanish tongue for com- 
mercial purposes. 

He considered it a misfortune that 
the girl should have with her a married 
sister — a sister whose eyes possessed 
a quality of shrewdness which from 
a practical, if unromantic, standpoint, 
compensated for their lack of luster. 
But people who were disposed to refer 
enthusiastically to the brilliancy of the 
young girl’s eyes, usually wound up by 
giving it as their impression that it was 
quite as well that some eyes possessed 
shrewdness rather than the more fascin- 
ating quality. 

The father and mother who had said 
good-by to their two children before 
the steamer had left its moorings in the 
Mersey, spent the first day of the voy- 
age looking at their photographs, and 
explaining to all comers the numerous 
characteristics of both the boy and the 
girl, the father dwelling upon the in- 
tellectual aspects of their traits, and the 
mother upon the development of these 
traits and their suggested connection 


76 


Zhz Sale of a Soul* 


with certain maladies — fully described, 
with incidental advice as to their treat- 
ment — from which the young persons 
had suffered. On the second day of 
the voyage the father and mother sat 
apart, and it was understood that they 
had quarreled. They made up their 
difference in the evening and talked of 
their children to all their fellow-passen- 
gers. The third day they had another 
quarrel and sat apart. 

The commercial gentleman en- 
deavored to make himself agreeable to 
the lady who was universally addressed 
as Mrs. Clarence. After he had made 
himself comfortable, — the first thought 
of a commercial gentleman, — he ven- 
tured to look after her comfort, chiefly 
in regard to her deck-chair, ordering 
the steward to send Mrs. Clarence an- 
other cushion, though Mrs. Clarence 
assured him that another cushion would 
be an encumbrance to her, and proved 
that she was in earnest by rejecting the 
cushion when it was brought by one of 
the cabin-boys. The commercial gen- 
tleman thereupon proved that he was 


^Tbe Sale of a Soul. 


77 


in earnest by appropriating the thing to 
his own use. 

He endeavored to place Mrs. Clar- 
ence at her ease by making a few bland 
inquiries regarding her husband and his 
social status. Her answers were suffi- 
ciently vague to cause him to assure 
Mr. Stuart Forrest, who had quite re- 
covered from his attack of mal de tner^ 
that there was something queer about 
her — a good deal more than met the 
eye. ^ 

How could Mr. Stuart Forrest set 
about repudiating that suggestion ? 
How could he tell the commercial 
gentleman that the lady known as Mrs. 
Clarence had run away from her hus- 
band, and joined him, Stuart Forrest, 
aboard the steamer, until the husband 
put in an appearance ? 

Queer? Well, perhaps the situation 
might have been so described by a 
gentleman whose critical faculty had 
been acutely developed through a 
course of commercial dealings among 
the republics of Central and South 
America. 


78 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


A shyness which sat upon him very 
loosely — an obvious “misfit,” due to 
exceptional circumstances — did not 
show Stuart Forrest to great advantage 
during the first days of his convales- 
cence. Sometimes a man is shy in 
the presence of another man with whose 
wife he has been detected in the act of 
running away. The position of the de- 
tected man is one that may, without 
explanation, develop in him a certain 
amount of embarrassment. 

But when he found that Mr. Hadley 
was not disposed to make a fuss about 
an occurrence of a type that has been 
known to produce strained relations 
between two men, he became more at 
ease. Indeed, Mr. Hadley’s bearing to- 
ward him was extremely cordial on his 
first appearunce at the cabin table. 
And when he appealed to the wife of 
the government official who sat at the 
captain’s right, to say if Mr. Forrest did 
not look comparatively well ; and when 
the lady raised her double glasses, and 
holding them by their long handle — 
there was no silly shyness about her — 


I 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


79 


scrutinized the convalescent for some 
moments, and then broke off saying 
“ no,” to say yes,” Mr. Forrest could 
scarcely fail to be gratified at his re- 
ception. 

The meal was tiffin, and when it was 
over, and Mr. Hadley’s fox terrier, 
which had formed so extraordinary an 
attachment to Mrs. Clarence, had been 
fed, and the greater number of the 
passengers had gone on deck, Agnes re- 
mained with Stuart Forrest in the saloon. 
She felt that there was something 
pathetic in the way he stood before her. 
An unprejudiced observer would have 
said that he looked a bit foolish. 

“ We have been made pretty fools of,” 
said he. 

“ Fools ?” said she interrogatively. 

“ What are we going to the West 
Indies for, anyway?” said he. “We 
should have stayed at home.” 

“ I have had an interview with him,” 
said she. “ I faced him and told him 
that the fact of his having followed me 
would make no difference to us.” 

“Good God ! You told him that ? ” 


So zbc Sale ot a SouL 

he cried. “ You said ‘ to us ’ — to you 
and me, you meant ? ” 

“ Of course I meant to you and me. 
He understood that. I told him that 
nothing that he could say or do would 
make me consent ever to live again with 
him as his wife.” 

“ You said that ? And what did he 
reply ? ” 

“ He said nothing that was not 
commonplace : he felt it to be his duty 
as a husband to follow me — stuff like 
that. He accused me of making no 
attempt to understand him ; but he saw 
what my determination was, and I sup- 
pose that was why he said at last that he 
would not try to prevent my associating 
with you so long as we remained aboard 
the steamer.” 

“ He said that ? Great Heavens ! 
What can he mean ? ” 

“ What can he mean ? Can you ask ? 
Is it not plain that he perceived from 
what I said to him, that it would be 
useless to try to turn me aside from my 
purpose ? ” 

‘‘Your purpose ? ” 


^bc Sale of a Soul, Si 

There was a certain weakness in his 
voice which irritated her. Did he not 
know what her purpose was — /ler pur- 
pose — Ais purpose ? 

“ You know it,” she said. “ You 
have had my letters. Would I have 
written them to you if my heart had not 
been full of my purpose ? My purpose 
— the living of a larger, freer life, a life 
in which love is not a mere incident, 
but the beginning and the end of all, a 
life in which I shall daily feel, as I do 
by your side, that I am understood.” 

“ He is an infernally clever man ! ” 
said Stuart Forrest. Her voice had 
risen until there was something of the 
rapture of a prophetess in its tone. 
Upon previous occasions when this 
divine ring had been in it, he had pro- 
longed it by striking even a higher key ; 
but now he replied to her passionate 
phrases in a tone of the merest collo- 
quialism, a tone that had a chill about 
it. “ He is an infernally clever man,” 
he repeated musingly. “ What a fool I 
was to mention the voyage to the West 
Indies ! I should have said Paris or 


82 


tibe Sale of a Soul, 


Monte Carlo. The West Indies ! Good 
Lord ! But I thought that it was safest 
to say the West Indies. In Europe one 
is always coming across people one 
knows.” 

“ What difference can it make to us, 
Stuart ? ” said she gently. 

“ What difference ? ” he cried. “ My 
dearest,” — the words escaped from hifti 
before he was aware they were coming ; 
he glanced around apprehensively, and 
his voice sank almost to a whisper, a 
whisper, moreover, in which there was 
no trace of passion — “ do you really 
fancy that he is a man to stand by with 
his hands in his pockets, watching you 
carry out your purpose ? ” 

“ He knows me sufficiently well to 
understand that nothing will turn me 
aside from my purpose,” said she. “ He 
knows now what I told you long ago — 
that I do not consider myself to be his 
wife any longer. Love — only love — 
that is the basis of a true marriage : 
the artificial shackles which are imposed 
on a man and woman, by the name of 
marriage, do not constitute a true union. 


^be Sale of a Soul* 83 

I have told you so — that is why we are 
here together now. I made it plain to 
him that that principle was the basis of 
the very serious step which I took in 
leaving him and in coming to your side, 
Stuart.” 

I wonder what he means ? ” said 
Stuart musingly. ‘‘ I should have run 
the chance of Europe. I know some 
charming places in the Tyrol. What 
devil put the West Indies into my 
head ? ” 

She did not make the attempt to sug- 
gest the personality of the supernatural 
agency which should be held account- 
able for his thinking of the West Indies. 
There was a pause before she said : 

Perhaps it is c^uite as well that mat- 
ters turned out as they have.” 

“ What ? what ? ” he cried, staring at 
her. There was still a tinge of saffron 
about his eyes, which she thought rather 
a pity ; his eyes she had always con- 
sidered very expressive. “Ah, I forgot ; 
you were not sick. I was.” 

“ I meant that it is quite as well that 
my — that Mr. Hadley should become 


84 


XLbc Sale of a SouL 


fully acquainted with my views. I had 
always an uneasy feeling against secrecy 
in this matter. Everything should be 
done aboveboard.” 

He stared with a sickly smile — the 
smile of the lover who has scarcely 
recovered from mal de merj a piteous 
thing — at the woman who was assuring 
him — him who had successfully run 
away with two women in days gone by 
— that the transaction should be free 
from the suspicion of an underhand 
element. 

“ Aboveboard, aboveboard,” he mur- 
mured. “ I think I’ll go back to my 
berth. Aboveboard ! ” 

It is best that one’s motives — one’s 
principles — should be fully appreciated,” 
said she. “ I should shudder at the 
thought of being looked on as merely 
one of those ordinary women who leave 
their husbands because they are tired of 
them. My last act before leaving his 
house was to write to my hus — Mr. 
Hadley, telling him how it was I found 
it impossible to remain under his roof 
any longer. He never got the letter, of 


XLbc Sale of a Soul. 


85 


course ; but I feel that the interview 
which I had with him here was more 
convincing to him than the letter could 
possibly have been.” 

” And he brought you your dog,” said 
Stuart abruptly. “ I heard you kissing 
the dog. I had an interval of ease just 
then.” 

“ Ah, dear Jim ! ” said she. “ We 
shall always keep Jim with us, my be- 
loved.” 

He looked at her. She thought that 
his eyes were gaining a deeper tinge of 
saffron : the primrose was yielding to 
the daffodil. 

“ I wonder if I shall ever understand 
you so well as he does,” said Stuart 
Forrest. 

“ As well as Jim does ?” said she. 

‘‘ As well as — yes, as well as Jim does.” 

“ My poor Jim ! Ah, Stuart, you 
have always understood me — it is be- 
cause you always understood me that I 
am by your side now, and forever ! ” 

She gave him her hand. He pressed 
it — not with such exuberance of passion, 
however, as to bruise it. 


86 


^be Sale of a Soul. 


“If we had only chosen the Tyrol,’* 
he murmured. 

Then he turned, and walked toward 
his cabin. He was not quite certain of 
himself even in a smooth sea. He had 
moments that were crowded with mis- 
givings — specters in yellow drapery. 

That day the captain mentioned to 
Mr. Hadley when they were having 
their smoke together, that it was his 
birthday ; and when the dessert was 
on the table that night, at a motion 
from Mr. Hadley, magnums of cham- 
pagne were uncorked, and passed down 
the table. 

“The captain’s birthday,” said Mr. 
Hadley. “ I will ask you to fill your 
glasses, ladies and gentlemen.” 

He got upon his feet, and in propos- 
ing the captain’s health, made one of 
the most brilliant little speeches that 
any of his auditors had ever heard. It 
was full of grace, tact, and originality, 
and its delivery was admirable. Al- 
though Mr. Hadley was a Member of 
Parliament he was a brilliant speaker. 



TUE captain’s birthday,’ SAID MR. HADLEY'.”— P«I/e 86 



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Zhc Sale of a Soul* 


87 


and capable of touching upon trifles so 
as to make them as interesting as blue- 
books, nay, more so, to certain audi- 
ences. It was his possession of this 
gift that had kept him out of every Gov- 
ernment. A sense of humor and a 
capacity for wit are resented by the 
House of Commons, though a teetotaler 
grimacing through a horse collar makes 
them yell. 

The effect of Mr. Hadley’s little 
speech upon all at the table was imme- 
diate. It left a pleasantly smooth taste 
upon the palate ; and in this respect 
was a congenial accompaniment to his 
champagne. 

For the remainder of the evening, the 
Mrs. Clarence of the dinner-table heard 
nothing except the enthusiastic com- 
ments of her fellow-passengers upon the 
speech of Mr. Hadley. 

“ What a delightful man ! ” cried the 
wife of the High Official, as she sat by 
the side of Agnes on the deck after din- 
ner. “ What a delightful man ! What 
would we be in the saloon if Mr. Had- 
ley were not among us ? What a dull 


88 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


lot the other men are, my dear ! That 
commercial gentleman is nearly as bad 
style as that dreadful Mr. What’s-his- 
name — the man who was sick, and yet 
tries to make us believe in the thrilling 
effect of biliousness shot from the hu- 
man eye. He must be a commercial 
traveler also. But Mr. Hadley ” 

Agnes sat mute ; and then the de- 
lightful Mr. Hadley came across the 
deck and said amusing things to the 
two ladies ; and gradually other chairs 
were slid along the deck in the direc- 
tion of this group, until Mr. Hadley 
found himself the center of an admiring 
circle. 

He extricated himself by the exercise 
of his gift of tact after half an hour ; 
and then there were further murmurs 
about “ that delightful man ! ” 


CHAPTER VII. 


‘‘All women are alike — you may 
take that for granted, my dear Mr. 
Hadley,” said the wife of the High 
Official. Another circle had been 
formed automatically the next after- 
noon, and tea was being served be- 
neath the awning of the deck — for the 
steamer had passed into the warm 
parallels. 

“ They are indeed,” acquiesced the 
captain. “ Women are all alike charm- 
ing, only some are more so.” 

“ Quarterdeck gallantry,” said the 
lady, whose name, it may at once be 
said, was Mrs. Darrell. “ You are not 
a trustworthy witness. Captain Baseden; 
you are impregnated with the spirit of 
the British mercantile marine, and you 
adore the sex as a matter of principle. 
But what does Mr. Hadley say ? ” 

“ I believe that woman is a hiero- 

89 


90 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


glyphic inscription that has not yet 
been deciphered,” said Mr. Hadley 
meekly. 

“ Ah, yes ; but is each woman a 
separate inscription ? ” asked the lady. 
“ That is the point we were discussing 
in connection with the novels of Mr. 
Thomas Hardy, which you say you 
have been reading.” 

“ What does it matter if women are 
separate and distinct inscriptions when 
you haven’t found the key to the 
system of hieroglyphics ? ” said the 
captain. 

“ Woman is a hieroglyph that has 
not yet been read,” said Mr. Hadley. 
“ Eve was the original inscription, and 
every woman that has lived since is a 
‘ squeeze ’ of the original.” 

“Truer words never were spoken. 
Have you ever been in the South Seas, 
sir ? ” came a voice from behind. 

“ Well, not exactly ; but I’ve read 
Treasure Island, if that’s what you 
mean,” said Mr. Hadley. “ Come 
forward, Mr. Paddleford, and tell us 
all about the South Seas and woman.” 


Xlbc Sale of a Soul. 


91 


“All, sir ? — did you say all ? ” in- 
quired Mr. Paddleford, and then gave 
a little laugh. “ It’s a large order, sir ; 
the South Seas by themselves might oc- 
cupy a man talking loosely for a week.’* 

“And woman, as a topic, has occu- 
pied men talking loosely for some 
thousands of years,” said Mr. Hadley. 

“ If one may judge from the tone of 
contemporary fiction — some fiction — 
woman has only been discovered within 
the past few years,” said Mrs. Darrell. 
“ That’s a mistake, I say. I repeat that 
woman existed long ago, and that she 
was ever the same as she is to-day.” 

“ Argon existed long ago ; argon is 
the new element in air,” said a voice in 
the background. 

“ So did jargon ; jargon is the new 
element in fiction,” responded Mrs. 
Darrell. She had good reason for sup- 
posing that the voice was the voice of 
her husband. 

“ Mr. Paddleford will tell us about 
the South Seas,” said Mr. Hadley; “ and 
we shall stop him if we find that the 
subject has no bearing upon woman.” 


92 


c:be Sale of a Soul, 


“ It has the closest bearing upon 
woman, sir,’' said Mr. Paddleford, look- 
ing at the ash of his cigar with great 
regret. He swallowed the remainder of 
his cup of rank tea ; it had to be made 
specially for himself ; for a long course 
of wanderings in Australia and among 
the South Sea Islands had made him 
fastidious as regards tea. ‘‘You must 
know that before I got my schooner I 
was a prospector,” said Mr. Paddleford, 
after he had devoted some moments to 
the thought of introducing his topic. 

“ A prospector is a man who goes 
about in search of the foundation for a 
subsequent prospectus,” explained Mr. 
Hadley. 

“I did some prospecting in New 
Zealand,” resumed Mr. Paddleford, 
“ and lived among the Maoris for three 
or four years. Then I went in the 
schooner through the South Seas. Now 
the islands of the South Seas are among 
the few places remaining in the world 
where women are as they’re made. I 
allude, of course, to the islands that 
have never been ruined by missionaries. 


XTbe Sale of a SouL 


93 


sir. The first missionary on record 
was the stranger that climbed over the 
hickory fence into the Garden of Eden, 
and told the woman that she should 
wear clothes ; and that’s the course 
that every missionary has pursued ever 
since. The first sign of the working of 
the Curse was the wish of the woman to 
get clothes. I reckon that every hus- 
band feels the effect of that primeval 
curse up to the present hour.” 

Mrs. Darrell held up her hands in 
horror, the High Official gave a little 
chuckle in the background, Mrs. Sar- 
gent, the fascinating widow of the sa- 
loon — every passenger-steamer carries 
a young widow as well as a surgeon — 
laughed outright. Mr. Hadley was 
grave. 

“Pray proceed, Mr. Paddleford,” 
said he blandly. “You were touching 
upon the islands where the women are as 
they’re made, before being demoralized 
by the introduction of morality.” 

“ Thank you, sir. I say I had a 
chance of seeing woman as a growth 
of nature ; and I’m prepared to say 


94 


Zbc Sale of a Soul* 


that she possessed all that sweetness 
and loveliness which one connects with 
the ideas of woman.” 

“ That’s quite nice, Mr. Paddleford,” 
said Mrs. Darrell. 

“ And I’ve found, ma’am, that the 
nearer the civilized woman comes to 
the woman of the South Sea Islands, 
the sweeter and lovelier she appears in 
the eyes of man. We want the nat- 
ural woman nowadays, ma’am, and 
that’s what we want. We want the 
women who have hearts, not the women 
who have views. Lord ! when I look 
around me in England and America — 
when I read in the papers and maga- 
zines and books (I’ve always been a 
reading man, though I prefer the study 
of human folios) — I say, when I hear 
and read of women with theories, wo- 
men with views, women with purposes, 
women with notions of marriage, women 
with notions of equality with man, 
notions of how to treat a husband, and 
how to be treated by a husband, I have 
no trouble in understanding how it is 
that the institution of marriage is on 


Zhc Sale of a Soul. 


95 


the way to become obsolete. How does a 
man know when he marries a woman she 
will not, in the course of a year or two, 
develop a theory that it is right to leave 
him, and go to another man ? Is it any 
wonder that he asks himself if it’s worth 
his while running the chance of agreeing 
to support a woman who will leave him 
in a year or two, because she has worked 
out a theory of her own, or annexed a 
theory of some other woman’s, that it’s 
wrong to live with a man who, maybe, 
parts his hair at the left side instead of 
the right ? It appears that woman has 
her ideas on the subject of morality nowa- 
days — a man’s morality ; and those views 
are retrospective also. Good Lord ! ” 

“ And why should not a woman have 
the right to be true to what she feels to 
be the truth ? ” cried Agnes, before the 
laugh that Mr. Paddleford’s final words 
produced had quite rippled away. She 
startled everyone in the circle, for all 
regarded Mrs. Clarence as a quiet 
woman, and shy. “ Why should a 
woman be denied the right to act in 
accordance with her convictions ? ” 


96 


Zbc Sale of a Soul, 


“Well, I might say, ma’am, that she 
should be denied the right because her 
convictions are of necessity the result 
of an imperfect experience of the 
world,” said Mr. Paddleford. “I won’t 
say that, however ; I won’t deny her 
the right of her conviction ; but I will 
say that it’s the chance of holding, or 
coming to hold, those inconvenient con- 
victions that make a man fight shy of a 
woman nowadays. We want something 
natural, not convictional.” 

“ Oh, a woman’s life is not given to her 
simply that she may become absorbed 
in a man. She has an identity of her 
own — she has proved herself as capable 
of thought, of arriving at a correct con- 
clusion on any subject as man.” 

There was a ring of scorn in Agnes’ 
voice as she raised her head from the 
slope of her deck chair, and spoke 
straight at Mr. Paddleford. 

“ If that last notion became general, 
ma’am, the marriage rate would fall 
lower still,” said he. “ A woman, you 
seem to think, is lost when she becomes 
absorbed in a man. Does a lump of 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


97 


sugar get lost when it becomes absorbed 
in a cup of tea? Not it. The tea 
might as well complain that it gets lost 
in the sugar. What the tea loses in the 
transaction is its sharpness — its bite. 
It becomes softer and more palatable. 
Now a true marriage between a man 
and a woman is tea and sugar. The 
man is the tea, the woman is the sugar. 
She takes the edge off him and makes 
him a better fellow all round. You talk 
of a woman having an identity of her 
own, and desiring that it should be ap- 
preciated. Ma'am, if a lump of sugar 
wants its identity to be fully appreciated, 
the best way of accomplishing that pur- 
pose is to drop it into a cup of tea. 
Man and woman are one by marriage, 
says the Bible, and we haven't got much 
beyond the good old Bible yet. To 
become one implies assimilation, and the 
result of the assimilation of a man and 
a woman is — well, an ideal cup of tea." 

“ With the assistance of an adequate 
supply of the milk of human kindness 
to tone both down," remarked the cap- 
tain, rising. 


98 


Zbc Sale of a SouL 


Your experience of women is un- 
doubtedly interesting, and you speak 
on the basis of your experience,” said 
Agnes. “ But a woman whose experi- 
ence forces her to turn aside from the 
conventional track, which is a good 
enough track for the general run of 
women, is, in my mind, deserving of 
respect. She has found out what is the 
truth, and she is bold enough to act in 
accordance with her convictions. You 
have probably not had experience of 
such a woman in the South Seas, Mr. 
Paddleford.” 

Mr. Paddleford laughed. 

“ I’ve been in other waters than the 
Pacific, ma’am,” said he. “ I’ve come 
across some women whose strong views 
led them to run away from their hus- 
bands with men who were not their 
husbands. One of that type ran away 
with me in America some twenty years 
ago, and then a new set of convictions 
compelled her, thank the Lord ! to run 
away with a cowboy ; it was the cowboy 
who met the original husband, and the 
shock of the meeting ruined an excep- 


Zbc Sale of a Soul, 


99 


tionally sound constitution. The con- 
viction that makes a woman run away 
from her husband is the conviction 
that, in spite of her husband’s having 
got to treat her with that passionless 
content which she calls neglect, she has 
still the power to make men love her 
with a passionate love. Well, she 
usually finds that her conviction on this 
point is well founded. But she usually 
finds that a lover has an awkward 
habit of developing all the neglect of 
the original husband, and the last state 
of that woman is worse than the 
first.” 

“ Great Heavens ! to think that a 
simple remark of mine, on the subject 

of What was the subject, by the 

way ? ” said Mrs. Darrell. 

“ The subject was the femininity of 
woman,” said Mr. Hadley. 

“ To be sure ! I only meant to suggest 
that there was a strongvein of femininity 
running through the whole race of 
womankind, and that it would be well 
if men recognized this fact in time ; and 
yet you see what came of it.” 


100 


Zbc Sale of a SouL 


“ A spark is a small thing,” said Mr. 
Hadley, “ but ” 

“ And a lover need not be more than 
five feet six,” said Mrs. Sargent, the 
widow, “ but ” 

“ I think I must take an azimuth,” 
said the captain, after a little pause in 
which everyone in the circle looked 
guiltily at the deck. 

“ An azimuth ? That sounds like a 
new American drink that one draws 
through a straw,” said Mr. Hadley. 
“ But the captain’s resolution need 
create no alarm. Taking an azimuth is 
one of the most inoffensive operations 
in practical navigation. I don’t think 
I’ll join the captain. I want to hear all 
that Mr. Paddleford knows on the sub- 
ject of Kanaka labor.” 

He went aft with Mr. Paddleford, 
and so the group broke up ; but not 
before Mrs. Darrell had said to Agnes : 

“ Those men would probably have 
gone very much farther if the captain 
had not risen when he did. That man 
Paddleford went quite far enough. He 
was not very amusing. He might have 


Zhc Sale of a Soul, 


lOI 


been if he had been allowed to go on, 
but then he would probably have for- 
gotten himself, or forgotten us, which 
would have amounted to the same 
thing ; though for that matter people 
talk nowadays with a freedom that takes 
the breath away from old-fashioned 
things like myself. You didn’t let the 
beach-comber have his own way alto- 
gether.” 

“ Could anything be more absurd 
than a group of educated people sitting 
listening to the views of a man like 
that ? ” cried Agnes. “ I don’t suppose 
he is ever among decent people except 
when he is traveling by a steamer.” 

I don’t suppose he is,” said Mrs. 
Darrell. “ But, do you know, my dear 
Mrs. Clarence, I don’t think that all the 
wisdom of the world is to be found in 
first-class compartments or saloons ? 
That Mr. Paddleford has undoubtedly 
seen life in a variety of forms, and has 
observed everything that passed under 
his eyes. It was Mr. Hadley who dis- 
covered him. He might have sat mute 
at his end of the table if Mr. Hadley 


102 xLhc Sale of a Soul, 

had not been clever enough to draw 
him out.” 

“ Oh, Mr. Hadley is ready to take up 
and draw out anyone who may, he 
thinks, give him some trustworthy in- 
formation on out-of-the-way matters,” 
cried Agnes, with some degree of impa- 
tience. 

“ Of course he is ; that is why he 
himself is one of the most interesting 
of men,” said Mrs. Darrell. “ Did 
you ever meet a more interesting 
man ? ” 

Agnes hesitated. 

“ Interesting,” she said, in a tone of 
contemplation. “ Interesting. Oh, no ; 
I don’t think that I ever met a more 
interesting man.” 

“You told me that you were ac- 
quainted with him in England,” said 
Mrs. Darrell. “ I wanted to ask you if 
he is married. The question may seem 
foolish to you, but you must remember 
that my husband and I have only paid 
flying visits home during the past nine 
years, and though, of course, Mr. Had- 
ley’s name is familiar to us, yet we never 


^be Sale of a Soul, 103 

met in England, or heard his private 
life discussed. Has he a wife ? ’* 

“ No,” said Agnes, after a moment’s 
pause. Was it possible that there was 
a whisper of sadness in her voice? 
“ No ; he has no wife.” 

“ I’m sorry for that,” said Mrs. 
Darrell seriously. “ I'm very sorry, for 
I’ve noticed Mrs. Sargent making eyes 
at him more than once, and I happen 
to know that last night they were walk- 
ing on deck together for nearly half 
an hour. Yes, I was standing at the 
entrance to the companion, well in the 
shade ; and, what’s more, I heard her 
make a remark about the moon.” 

Agnes smiled, but not until she had 
become conscious of a sensation which 
she had never before experienced. The 
sensation could not possibly be one of 
jealousy ; it would be ludicrous for a 
woman who has made the attempt to 
run away from her husband with another 
man, to feel the least pang of jealousy 
when she hears that her husband has 
been seen walking with another woman. 
She smiled. 


104 XLbc Sale ot a Soul. 

“ Oh, you may smile, my dear young 
friend,” said Mrs. Darrell. “ But no 
human being can tell how great a fool 
an exceedingly clever man can be made 
by a widow with eyes like saucers, who 
talks to him about the moon on the 
deck of a steamer after dinner. Look 
at her with that Mr. What’s-his-name — 
is it Forrest ? — leaning over her. She is 
pretending to be greatly interested in 
the illustrations to that book which he 
is showing her, but in reality she is 
watching Mr. Hadley, and hoping that 
he will soon leave his friend the pros- 
pector, and come beside her. Oh, I 
know that type of widow quite well. 
Fve met one aboard every steamer in 
which I ever took a voyage.” 

Agnes smiled. 

That night, shortly after the whist sets 
had been formed in the saloon, Agnes 
was seated reading, her swivel chair 
turned with its back to the table, when 
she heard her husband announce 
“ Mate ” to the man with whom he was 
playing chess at one end of the saloon. 


^be Sale of a Soul* 105 

and, after a chat over the points of the 
game, declare that he was going on 
deck to have a smoke. 

Not many minutes after he had gone 
up the companion there was a lisp of 
silken garments at the other side of the 
table, and raising her eyes from her 
book, Agnes caught a glimpse of Mrs. 
Sargent in the act of leaving the saloon. 

Mrs. Darrell was not so utterly ab- 
sorbed in the cards which had just been 
dealt to her as to be unable to find a 
moment to cast a meaning glance in the 
direction of the lady whom she called 
Mrs. Clarence. Immediately afterward 
she said to her partner : 

By the way, I wonder at what hour 
the moon rises to-night ? ” 

‘‘ Oh, it’s near full moon ; so that it 
will probably be well above the horizon 
by half-past eight,” replied her partner. 

And I heard eight bells made a 
long time ago,” said Mrs. Darrell. 
“ Ah, yes ; it’s a quarter to nine now. 
Who leads ? ” 


CHAPTER VIII. 


Agnes had, she believed, sufficient 
reason for feeling irritated. Reason ? 
She had several reasons for feeling 
irritated. Two days and two nights 
had passed since Mrs. Sargent had in 
that barefaced fashion — barenecked as 
well, for Mrs. Sargent was generously 
dicolleUe — followed Mr. Hadley out of 
the saloon, and during that space of 
time the steamer had slid into a still 
warmer climate. The saloon being 
rather warm at nights, there was a 
good deal of promenading on deck 
even before the moon had risen, and 
there was a good deal of mysterious 
whispering, a good many smiling sug- 
gestions, among the various groups that 
formed under the awning after break- 
fast and when afternoon tea was being 
served. 

These whisperings became a source 


XLbe Sale of a SouL 107 

of irritation to Agnes, because now and 
again they shaped themselves into Mr. 
Hadley’s name, and not only so, but 
into Mr. Stuart Forrest’s name as well. 

She was irritated because people 
should be so idiotic as to fancy, or even 
pretend to fancy, that either Mr. Had- 
ley or Mr. Forrest could be foolish 
enough to lose his head on account of 
a woman who had eyes like saucers — 
badly painted saucers. Of course she 
knew that her husband was not the 
sort of man to make a fool of himself 
for so inadequate a cause as the shape 
and hue of a pair of eyes ; and as for 
Mr. Forrest — well, did she not know 
what was in the heart of Mr. Forrest ? 
Was it not the bond of their mutual 
understanding that brought Stuart For- 
rest and herself together abroad the 
Demerara? Ah, she understood him, 
and he understood her. 

And yet the eyes of Mrs. Sargent 
were a constant source of irritation to 
her, and the unsubdued whisperings of 
Mrs. Sargent’s dinner gown — the bodice 
economically cut as regards material — 


io8 XTbe Sale of a SouU 

added to the effect of the subdued 
whisperings — with a giggle or two from 
the girl and boy — of the idiotic pas- 
sengers. 

But what was most irritating to her 
was the indifference with which those 
idiotic people — Mrs. Darrel was as in- 
discriminating as the worst of them — 
regarded Mr. Forrest, when he was 
among them and not walking with Mrs. 
Sargent. While Mr. Hadley was almost 
hourly appealed to on some point that 
arose for discussion, and his opinion, 
given with such admirable tact as satis- 
fied both sides, invariably regarded as 
final, no one seemed to think it worth 
while to apply to Mr. Forrest. When, 
once or twice, he ventured unasked to 
express an opinion on some matter, no 
one seemed to be in the least interested 
in his views. In fact, the position to 
which Mrs. Darrell had insolently 
relegated him, — bracketing him with the 
commercial gentleman, — seemed to be 
accepted by the other passengers as that 
which he was meant to occupy. He 
was an absolute nonentity aboard. 


^be Sale of a Soul, 109 

No one ever suggested that he had 
good looks. Of course it was not on 
account of his good looks that Agnes 
had been attracted to him ; it was 
simply because she felt that he under- 
stood her ; and when no one whom she 
met had regarded her from any other 
standpoint save that of the wife of 
Claude Hadley, the well-informed mem- 
ber for Staplehurst, who was so annoy- 
ing to the President of the Board of 
Trade, he had assumed that she had 
an identity of her own, and had spoken 
to her in the long unfamiliar tone of an 
impassionate lover. But if she felt that 
it was not his good looks that had over- 
come her, and shown her that it was 
her duty to leave her husband, she had 
felt all the same that he was good-look- 
ing ; so that the ignoring of this fact 
by the people in the saloon was another 
source of irritation to her. 

Her husband had told her the first 
morning they were aboard that he had 
no idea of giving her any command or 
even any advice in regard to Stuart For- 
rest, but that she might walk with him 


no 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


and talk with him when she pleased. 
She had, as is already known, commu- 
nicated this to Stuart Forrest with 
something like triumph in her eyes ; 
Mr. Hadley might not understand her, 
but he knew her well enough to be 
aware of the fact that it would be quite 
useless for him to lay any prohibition 
upon her in regard to Stuart Forrest. 
Mr. Hadley gave her credit at least for 
some force of character — for a deter- 
mined spirit that would follow the dic- 
tates of her own heart at any cost, and 
in the face of every opposition. 

But Stuart Forrest had had sufficient 
self-control to conceal the exultation to 
which this communication must have 
moved him. She had felt how discreet 
he had been in this matter. And since 
then his discretion had been equally 
commendable. He had never shown 
any of a lover’s ardor in talking to her 
when they found themselves alone in 
the saloon or on the deck. He clearly 
had himself splendidly under control ; 
he would not give the other passengers 
a chance of whispering in their hateful 


Zbc Sale of a SouL 


III 


way about her. She felt that this was 
so, and she made a noble effort to give 
to him that high commendation which 
his discretion had certainly earned for 
him. It would, she felt, be quite im- 
possible for the least just of the women 
aboard — she took no record of the men 
in this connection — to associate her 
name with the name of Mr. Forrest, on 
account of his bearing toward her ; and 
assuredly her feelings did not deceive 
her in this respect. There was no man 
aboard the steamer who was less lover- 
like in regard to her than Mr. Forrest, 
so splendidly did he keep himself in 
hand. 

Moreover, his discretion did not end 
here ; he was not content to behave 
only in such a way as gave the passen- 
gers no room to associate his name with 
hers, he was clever enough to take such 
steps as turned their thoughts — their 
suspicions — in quite another direction. 
And in this respect, too, his efforts were 
crowned with success. He was artful 
enough to pay — or rather, of course, to 
pretend to pay — a great deal of attention 


112 


XLbc Sale of a SouL 


to Mrs. Sargent in view of the other 
passengers, and they had, she knew, 
fallen into the trap which he had laid 
for them. 

When she saw him carrying Mrs. 
Sargent’s deck chair from nook to nook, 
arranging her cushions and wraps, giv- 
ing her advice in a confidential tone 
regarding the brand of cigarettes which 
she smoked, and placing his own box 
open on her knee, selecting books for 
her at the library, and (it actually 
happened upon one occasion) fetching 
out of her cabin a pair of tan shoes 
with remarkably high heels, which she 
had a fancy for wearing, instead of the 
pair that but indifferently concealed the 
splendid clocking that attracted all eyes 
to her feet — when Agnes saw all these 
transactions, and noticed the nudges of 
the less artistic passengers, and heard 
the delicate coughs which fluttered in 
the throats of some of the more artistic, 
she felt greatly annoyed. This was 
only at first, however ; afterward she 
smiled. Mr. Forrest was playing a 
part, she felt, and he was certainly doing 


Zbc Sale ot a Soul, 113 

it very cleverly and with admirable 
subtlety. 

She smiled quite pleasantly, and said 
a few words in passing Stuart Forrest 
on the evening of the day on which he 
had helped Mrs. Sargent on with her 
shoes, and he smiled — in a sort of way 
— in return, and then examined very 
carefully the end of the cigar which he 
was smoking. 

It was very nice of you to speak to 
him, my dear,” said Mrs. Darrell, when 
Agnes seated herself near that lady. 

“Nice?” said Agnes, with wide, in- 
quiring eyes. “ Nice ? ” 

“ Oh, you know what I mean, my 
dear,” said Mrs. Darrell. “ It was quite 
nice of you. He is more to be pitied 
than blamed, that Mr. — Mr. — what’s 
his name ? — I had it quite right yester- 
day, I know. You have a heart full of 
compassion for even the humblest of 
things created. A widow indeed ! 
Widow ! The sort of widow of whom 
you ask, first. Is her husband dead ? 
and, secondly. Had she ever been mar- 
ried to him ? ” 


1 14 ^be Sale of a Soul. 

Again Agnes felt irritated, and again 
she smiled. She felt that she should 
make every allowance for Mrs. Darrell. 
Mrs. Darrell could not possibly know 
with what subtlety Stuart Forrest was 
carrying out his scheme of discretion. 

This went on for three days. Mrs. 
Sargent, not being aware — poor thing ! 
— of the fact that she was being fooled 
by Stuart Forrest in order to save Mrs. 
Clarence’s name from the suspicion of a 
taint, regarded the artful Mr. Forrest as 
her own personal attendant, ordering 
him about with the greatest freedom, 
and accepting his attentions with the 
nonchalance of a domestic cat of the 
same sex in regard to the favors offered 
to her on an orchard wall in the cool of 
the evening. 

She seemed to have abandoned her 
design of making the moon the topic of 
conversation between herself and Mr. 
Hadley, for after taking two strolls with 
her on the deck on consecutive even- 
ings, Mr. Hadley suddenly developed 
an enthusiasm for chess at night, and 
the games that he had with the ship’s 


^be Sale of a Soul. 115 

surgeon became unusually protracted ; 
so that he had only time for a cigar 
before turning in to his berth. To be 
sure, the whole of the day was free to 
him so far as Mrs. Sargent was con- 
cerned ; but he did not avail himself of 
the freedom which it offered to him. 
He never placed his chair beside the 
chair of the widow ; and upon one oc- 
casion, when she took a seat in a vacant 
chair close to where he was standing, 
and turned her large and lustrous eyes 
up to his face, beginning a conversation, 
he perceived that the captain was sig- 
naling to him to join him in the chart 
room, and he hurried off with an abrupt- 
ness that was startling — almost rude. 

When Mrs. Sargent discovered, as 
she speedily did, through the medium 
of those large and lustrous eyes of hers, 
that two or three of the passengers — 
they were ladies, of course — had ob- 
served this transaction, and were com- 
menting on it with smiles and in whis- 
pers, she snubbed Stuart Forrest with 
great emphasis when he sauntered up 
to her. 


ii6 ^i:be Sale of a Soul* 

Upon observing this transaction there 
were fresh smiles and additional whis- 
pers among the passengers. 

Stuart Forrest sulked for an hour. 

Then she was kind to him : she ac- 
cepted from his hand a brandy-and- 
soda with a lump of ice clinking against 
the sides of the tumbler. 

Poor fool ! ” said Mrs. Darrell. 

It is probable that she referred to 
Mr. Forrest. You see, she was quite in 
the dark in regard to that subtlety of 
discretion of which Mr. Forrest was so 
earnest and intelligent an exponent. 


CHAPTER IX. 


‘‘You were quite right/' said Mrs. 
Darrell in describing to Mrs. Clarence, 
who had not been on deck, the attitude 
which had been assumed by Mr. Hadley 
in regard to Mrs. Sargent, and the sub- 
sequent snubbing of Stuart Forrest by 
the lady. “You were quite right : Mr. 
Hadley is not the sort of man to be 
made a fool of by a woman like that. I 
was wrong. Though, really, having 
seen so much of men in the course of 
my life, I have long ago come to the 
conclusion that the cleverest men are 
actually the first to allow themselves to 
be fooled by women who could be seen 
through by women at the merest 
glance. But, of course, you have known 
Mr. Hadley for some time, and thus 
were in a better position than I was to 
speak definitely regarding him.” 

It so happened, however, that Agnes 


ii8 xLhc Sale of a Soul. 

had not uttered a word in regard to 
him : she had only smiled. 

“ But you will admit, I’m sure, that I 
had some grounds for speaking of him 
as I did. He had been by her side 
three times that day — three times that I 
know of. I can’t, of course, say how 
many times of which I knew nothing. 
And then she had talked to him of the 
moon. I see now, however, that it was 
merely his natural instinct toward 
urbanity that led him to pay her some 
little attention. Oh, yes ; women like 
that invariably find a congenial com- 
panion, and she is no exception to the 
general run. The rook does not pair off 
with the turtle dove, neither do men 
gather thistles from grapes — or does the 
text say prunes ? Never mind, the 
principle is the same ; and they made 
up their little difference over brandy- 
and-soda. Eyes ! Well, that Mr. Pad- 
dleford is quaint. He said that that 
woman’s eyes would do well enough to 
scuttle a ship if a large size auger wasn’t 
handy.” 

She then went on to refer to the 


XTbe Sale of a Soul. 119 

cleverness which Mr. Hadley had dis- 
played in discovering Mr. Paddleford. 
Most of the people in the saloon would 
have been content, she said, to allow 
that man, who seemed no whit superior 
to the average trader, and who, more- 
over, wore clothes that could never have 
been made by a tailor with any self-re- 
spect, to sit at the end of the table, 
never opening his mouth during the 
entire voyage ; but, happily, Mr. Had- 
ley was more enterprising. He had had 
a chat with Mr. Paddleford, and Mr. 
Paddleford had, under his patronage, 
been encouraged to give the occupants 
of the saloon the benefit of his wide ex- 
perience of men and manners, and his 
stories were the most wonderful that she, 
Mrs. Darrell, had ever listened to, and 
she had, from time to time, listened to 
some wonderful stories. 

At this very moment Mr. Paddleford 
himself came up, and at Mrs. Darrell’s 
suggestion, gave her and her friend 
Mrs. Clarence some account of his ex- 
perience in the South Seas ; but with- 
out referring to the sweetness and fasci- 


120 


tTbe Sale of a Soul. 


nation of the natural woman, who, ac- 
cording to his previous discourse, was 
only to be found in perfection against a 
background of hibiscus and taro leaves. 

He dealt with his early trading 
efforts, when he had a schooner of his 
own, and got large cargoes of copra in 
return for some dozen or two silk hats 
of a pattern that had been “ called in 
in England, and were rejected even by 
the miners who came down to Mel- 
bourne in the old days, and who bought 
nearly everything they saw. He had 
put a white calico band halfway up the 
black silk hat, making it like the funnel 
of whatever line of steamers painted 
their smokestacks black and white, and 
the possession of one of these hats had 
conferred upon a Kanaka a semblance 
of a civilization of so high a standard 
as had caused him to insult amissionary 
who only wore a soft wide-awake. 

But as a rule, he said, the mission- 
aries and he (the narrator) had got on 
very well together. One of them had 
showed him, he said, how the profes- 
sions of a missionary and a trader were 


XLbc Sale of a Soul* 


I2I 


not necessarily antagonistic ; but how 
the trader should be the complement, 
so to speak, of the missionary. Why, 
would it not strike anyone that, when 
the missionary had convinced the 
natives of an island of the sin of not 
wearing clothes, the local price of calico 
would go up, and the next trader who 
arrived with a few hundred stitched-up 
suits would make a fortune ? Acting on 
this hint, he had, he said, engaged that 
missionary as his agent in advance, and 
between them they had done a glorious 
work of evangelization in the South 
Pacific. 

Then he had done a little with old 
spurs among the natives, and he had a 
particular pattern of spectacles made 
for trade, with large eyes of crimson 
glass. That spectacle as an agent of 
civilization had never been surpassed 
among the more bloodthirsty Kanakas. 
It stood to reason that when they 
thirsted for blood they had only to put 
on the spectacles, and they were more 
than satisfied at once. They could 
never hope in their most sanguine mo- 


122 


XLbc Sale of a SouU 


ments to see more bloodshed in a pro- 
tracted campaign than they perceived 
in the course of an evening stroll among 
their neighbors. 

And all the time that Mr. Paddle- 
ford was giving them his sketches of 
commerce among a primeval people, 
Agnes was observing Mr. Forrest by 
the side of the widow with the lustrous 
eyes ; and she was greatly annoyed 
with herself for being so foolish as to 
feel irritated because of the occurrence 
of an act so very simple as Stuart 
Forrest’s drinking out of the same tum- 
bler as Mrs. Sargent. 

It was in vain that she assured her- 
self that Steward Forrest was only play- 
ing a part ; that it was for her sake he 
was making himself contemptible in the 
eyes of some of the passengers, and 
ridiculous in the eyes of all — that disa- 
greeable feeling would not disperse. 

“Vulgar creatures ! ” said Mrs. Dar- 
rell. “ They’ll be changing hats next. 
Do they fancy that the Atlantic Ocean 
is a Hampstead pond ? Let us turn our 
chairs round from them.” 


XLbc Sale of a Soul. 


123 


She shifted her deck chair right about, 
and Agnes made a move in the same 
direction, only she did not altogether 
reverse the position of her chair ; she 
simply shifted it sufficiently far to pre- 
vent her seeing the ridiculous figure cut 
by the man with whom she hoped to 
pass the remainder of her life ; the man 
who professed to understand her ; the 
man who had held her hand while she 
talked of her high aims ; the man to 
whom she had given her soul in ex- 
change for his love. 

She closed her eyes in the agony of 
that moment, and they remained closed 
for some time. It was part of her agony 
to be compelled to listen to the remarks 
made by the lady who was beside her — 
remarks on the subject of refinement 
and vulgarity. Mr. Paddleford, who 
would not venture to call himself a 
gentleman, had undoubtedly the sym- 
pathies of one ; whereas that man — she 
indicated by a movement of her left 
thumb the position of Mr. Forrest — 
would probably feel greatly affronted if 
anyone suggested that he was not a 


124 


Zbc Sale of a SouU 


gentleman, though he was simply a 
highly colored copy of a London 'Arry. 

When, shortly afterward, Mrs. Darrell 
rose and disappeared down the compan- 
ion, Agnes sprang to her feet. 

“ Oh, my God ! my God ! what I 
am suffering ! What agonies ! What 
tortures — tortures ! ” she murmured, 
passing her hand over her white 
face. 

The laughter of the pair who were sit- 
ting together down the deck and play- 
ing some joke with the remainder of the 
lump of ice from which the liquid in the 
high tumbler had receded, came to her 
ears. She involuntarily shuddered as 
she went somewhat unsteadily across 
the deck to the side of the ship and 
looked into the green sea. 

It seemed deliciously cool and grate- 
ful to her eyes, and the laughter of its 
ripples had a sweet and innocent sound, 

quite unlike There it came again 

from the deck chairs. 

“ You are looking pale ; are you sure 
that you are quite well ? ” 

She started guiltily at the sound of 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 125 

her husband’s voice. Mr. Hadley was 
standing beside her. 

“ I may be pale ; but I am quite well, 
thank you," she replied. 

** I’m not so sure of it," said he. “ I 
saw your eyes close as you lay back on 
your chair just now, and you walked 
unsteadily from your chair to the bul- 
warks." 

So he had been watching her. Was 
it a thrill of satisfaction that passed 
through her at the reflection ? 

** 1 am quite well," she said. dare 
say you think that I am the sort of 
woman to abandon my purpose because 
of — a — a — laugh ! " she added after a 
pause, filled up by the sounds from the 
deck chairs aft. 

There would be no use in my giving 
you any opinion," said he. “ You are 
one of those women who will learn only 
by your own experience — the experience 
of others carries no weight with you. 
You have said that I do not understand 
you." 

And by that phrase I meant every- 
thing," said she. “You are as far from 


126 


trbe Sale of a Soul* 


understanding me as you ever were. 
Yes, or you would not come beside me 
now.” 

She went slowly back to her chair, 
and seated herself once again. She felt 
that she could bear any agony now with- 
out flinching. He would never have 
the satisfaction of seeing that she was 
suffering. 

Suffering ! What a fool she was to 
let herself be so affected simply because 
Stuart Forrest was doing his best to 
prevent the horrid people — the whisper- 
ing, gossiping, slandering people, who 
were aboard the steamer — from perceiv- 
ing the truth. 

The truth being, of course, that he 
had joined his life to hers — that he was 
the one man in the world who under- 
stood her — that she had agreed to ac- 
cept his love in exchange for her soul. 

How well he was playing his part, to 
be sure ! Oh, no one situated as he 
was in respect of her, could possibly 
play the part better. There was none 
that suspected the truth — no, not one. 

She smiled quite pleasantly (she fan- 


Zbc Sale of a Soul* 


127 


cied), so that her husband might be 
convinced in a moment of the futility 
of imagining that she was inclined to 
go back from her purpose, her purpose 
being the sale of that soul to which ref- 
erence had been made by her more 
than oncec 

She glanced up to see what was the 
effect of her husband’s observance of 
her smile. 

He was not looking at her. His 
glance was turned much farther aft ; 
and there was upon his face also a curi- 
ous little smile — quite different, how- 
ever, from hers. Then he turned away 
suddenly and looked over the side of 
the steamer. After the lapse of a minute 
or two he sent his eyes down the deck 
as before, and the curious smile came 
back to his features. He remained at 
the side of the steamer until Mrs. Sar- 
gent thought well to send Stuart 
Forrest on some errand down to the 
saloon, and the moment that Stuart 
Forrest went into the companion, Mr. 
Hadley sauntered down the deck and 
stood before Mrs. Sargent. He spoke 


128 


Zbc Sale ot a Soul. 


a few words to her, and she gave a 
laugh, holding up a plump forefinger as 
if in gentle reproof. 

Then he walked away to where his 
chair was lying, and, returning with it, 
opened it and seated himself in it close 
to Mrs. Sargent’s. She displayed a 
good deal of the embroidery of one 
stocking in kicking away the chair in 
which Mr. Forrest had been sitting, to 
make room for Mr. Hadley’s. 

Once again, then, there came a ripple 
of laughter to the ears of the unhappy 
woman who sat alone on her deck 
chair. 

The sound was unendurable. She 
got upon her feet — not without an 
effort — and walked with a face full 
of scorn to the entrance to the cabin. 

She flung herself down on the sofa 
which was in her berth, and cried in 
her agony : 

O God ! my God ! let me die, let 
me die ! ” 



O GOD ! DKT MK DIE, LET ME DIB ! " — Pa(je 128 




CHAPTER X. 


Mrs. Darrell could not but feel 
that she had spent a very profitable 
afternoon, though she had been greatly 
shocked. The sensation of being 
shocked is not, however, altogether 
profitless. It is not even disagreeable. 
It has a bracing effect upon the nerves, 
and it usually makes one think much 
better of one’s self, if worse of one’s fel- 
low-creatures. Mrs. Darrell had re- 
turned to the deck shortly after Agnes 
had gone down to the cabin, and the 
moment that she had seated herself 
with the book which she had been 
choosing at the library, she was startled 
by the sound of that laughter which 
had been too much for Agnes to bear. 
It was, however, no longer the rude 
duet which had been in course of prog- 
ress a quarter of an hour before, for 
Mr. Hadley did not laugh in a way that 


129 


^be Sale of a SouL 


130 

suggested the popular northern suburb 
on a bank holiday. 

She turned round, and then it was 
that she received the shock to which 
reference has been made ; for she saw 
that Mr. Hadley was busily engaged 
making a fool of himself ; Mr. Hadley, 
to whom she had just given a clean bill, 
so to speak ; Mr. Hadley, whom she 
had admitted to have accused on in- 
sufficient evidence of having voluntarily 
set his feet on the pathway that leads to 
folly. Mr. Hadley was now making a 
fool of himself on his chair, which he 
had drawn by the side of Mrs. Sar- 
gent's. 

She told it all to Agnes later on when 
they were drinking their tea together. 

I never got such a shock, my dear 
Mrs. Clarence,” she had affirmed ; but 
this was an exaggeration, for she had 
had a wide experience of shocks — no 
one who has taken many voyages on 
ocean steamers can avoid such an ex- 
perience ; and certainly no one who 
forms rapid friendships with young 
married woman whose husbands are 


XTbe Sale of a Soul* 13 1 

not en Evidence y such as she was in the 
habit of contracting. “ Such a shock I 
I told you that I had been unjust to 
Mr. Hadley.*' 

“Yes; you said that he had proved 
himself superior to the fascinations of 
Mrs. Sargent," replied Agnes, smiling ; 
she was now able to smile, for her 
friend Jim was standing with his fore- 
paws on her knee, his head turned 
knowingly to one side, taking cake 
very sympathetically from her hands. 

“ And so I fancied he had. But 
there he was telling her quite confi- 
dentially some experience of his — some- 
thing quite dreadful it must have been 
by the way she laughed — such women 
never laugh at anything unless it is very 
dreadful — and by the confidential way 
in which he was telling it — men are 
never confidential with a woman unless 
they are telling her something dreadful. 
She laughed, and now and again shook 
her stumpy finger at him." (Mrs. 
Sargent’s friends referred to her fingers 
as plumpy her enemies as stumpy?) “ I 
could almost hear her telling him that 


132 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


he was a naughty boy, or to go along — 
most likely the latter. And then, of 
course, he laughed — not the Hampstead 
laugh, I admit, but still he laughed. 
Oh, it was quite scandalous ! And 
then the other man came up, and glared 
at him. He bore the glaring with 
equanimity. The woman had her feet 
on the other man’s chair, and when he 
came near and laid his hand on the 
back of the chair — his own chair, mind, 
— she told him to go away, as she was 
very comfortable and happy. I heard 
her, my dear Mrs. Clarence.” 

“ And he went away ? ” said Agnes 
interrogatively. She was sure that 
Stuart Forrest, however desirous he 
might be to play his cleverly designed 
part without a hitch, would not remain 
to be insulted by that woman. 

“ Not he,” said Mrs. Darrell. “ He 
didn’t go away. He said something — I 
couldn’t catch what it was ; but I could 
see by the expression on his face that 
he meant it to be very bitter — something 
stinging, you know. But the other two 
pretended not to hear it, and then he 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


133 


sulked — the second time to-day. Oh, 
he's an ill-conditioned thing altogether.” 

“ But if they so grossly insulted him,” 
suggested Agnes. 

“ What ! you take his part ? Oh, my 
dear ! A man like that ! I thought it 
very nice of you to speak to him as you 
did this morning in passing him, — a little 
civility costs nothing, I always have af- 
firmed, — but to take his part ! Oh ” 

I don't see what right Mr. Hadley 
had to insult him, that’s all,” said 
Agnes. 

She knew that she need not attempt 
to explain to Mrs. Darrell that Mr. For- 
rest was an extremely adroit man, play- 
ing a difficult part with consummate 
skill. In spite of her outburst in her 
cabin, she had succeeded wonderfully in 
persuading herself again that the view 
she had taken of Stuart Forrest’s atti- 
tude was the correct one. 

“ It was the woman who insulted him, 
if there was any question of insult in the 
matter,” said Mrs. Darrell. “I can’t 
for myself see where the insult lay. 
You must not judge men like him from 


134 


XLbc Sale of a SouL 


our standpoint. You may fling cakes 
of mud at a hippopotamus and he’ll only' 
smile at you, but a single spark from the 
roadside will make that pretty fox terrier 
there feel uneasy. Yes, the man is 
thoroughly ill-conditioned. But it isn’t 
about him I meant to speak : it’s about 
Mr. Hadley. Great Heavens ! to think 
that he should fall so low ! But it’s 
what I’ve always known : the cleverest 
and the nicest men are not to be de- 
pended on when a woman like that 
turns up — with such eyes and a dinner- 
gown with a bodice cut in that style ; 
a widow into the bargain — a nominal 
widow. Oh, yes ; Mr. Hadley has 
greatly disappointed me. Of course, 
she'll never allow the other man to be 
by her side when she can get Mr. 
Hadley.” 

” Why should she not ? ” asked Ag- 
nes, growing bolder. 

“ Why ? Because she has eyes — 
plenty of them,” replied Mrs. Darrell. 
** But if they were fewer in number and 
less acute in their operation, she would 
still be able to distinguish between Mr. 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 135 

Hadley and that other person. Would 
any woman, do you fancy, be idiot 
enough to choose that man when she 
could get Mr. Hadley ? ” 

What could Agnes say ? How could 
she tell that shrewd woman with plenty 
of experience of the world, that she, 
Agnes, had been ready to forfeit her 
reputation — her husband — nay, her very 
soul, for that man? How could she 
tell her that when the choice had been 
offered to her between the two men, 
with her reputation and her soul thrown 
into the scale with Mr. Hadley into the 
bargain, she had chosen Stuart Forrest? 

For a few moments she felt her 
agony return to her. But then the old 
reflection came to comfort her : she 
alone of all the people aboard the 
steamer understood Stuart Forrest. The 
others were compelled to judge of him 
as they saw him, and aboard the steamer 
he was not himself. How could it be 
expected that he should be himself ? 
He had to think about her as well as 
himself. Was ever man placed in so 
difficult a position ? 


136 


^be Sale of a SouL 


And then Mr. Hadley passed before 
her, where she was sitting, with one of 
the steward's boys bearing a small silver 
muffin dish, which he set down, at the 
direction of Mr. Hadley, on a camp- 
stool at the side of Mrs. Sargent. She 
gave a little screech of delight, and de- 
clared in no pianissimo tones that Mr. 
Hadley was a perfect angel for having 
induced the baker to prepare such a tea 
cake all for her little self — that was her 
phrase, and it sounded quite in keeping 
with her general entourage^ and in sym- 
pathy with the childlike pertness in the 
tilt of her toes beyond the line of her 
white serge dress. 

But the reply that Mr. Hadley made 
to her was delivered very close to her 
ear, and in quite too low a tone for any- 
one in her neighborhood to hear, though 
everyone would have dearly liked to 
hear it. 

“ I am shocked ! quite shocked ! " 
said Mrs. Darrell, and everyone in her 
neighborhood — and farther — could hear 
her quite distinctly. 

Agnes had watched the little comedy 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 137 

which was being played aft. Her eyes 
had blazed with indignation when Mr. 
Hadley put his head close to Mrs. Sar- 
gent’s left ear. That attitude was in- 
famous she was ready to declare. 

What on earth are you doing with 
your serviette ? ” cried the lady beside 
her. 

Agnes looked with eyes blank, that 
had lately been blazing, at the little ball 
of fringed linen which she had crushed 
between her hands. That was the 
form which was assumed by the little 
serviette which she had spread on her 
knees while eating her tea cake. 

She flung it on the deck. 

“I’m not well,” she said. “I have 
been — suffering — suffering — oh, suffer- 
ing ! ” she cried. 

“ Great Heavens ! Let me help you,” 
said Mrs. Darrell, making an effort to rise. 

“No, no!” Agnes had got upon 
her feet. “ No, no ; I’ll go below. In 
a few minutes I’ll be all right. Please 
don’t make a fuss, Mrs. Darrell, I have 
had these — these — little — little — weak- 
nesses before.” 


13^ ^be Sale of a Soul. 

She was grasping with a rigid hand 
the back of her chair, her eyes fixed in 
a fierce gaze at the deck chairs astern. 

Let me go down with you,” whis- 
pered Mrs. Darrell. 

“ On no account,” said Agnes. ‘‘ I 
am strong enough for that — and more 
— and more.” 

So she was. She walked quite 
steadily across the deck. 

But when she had flung herself upon 
her sofa for the second time within the 
hour, her whispered cry was not for 
death, but for life — life — life to be able 
to tear that woman to pieces ; and as 
that hope inspired her, she mterlaced 
her fingers in the fringes of her pillow, 
and she sank her teeth in the embroidery 
and tore at it. 

Had Mr. Paddleford seen her in that 
act, his experience of the islands where 
nature is supreme in plant life and 
woman life would have led him to de- 
clare that she was giving very satisfac- 
tory tokens of a healthy condition of 
mind and heart — that she was showing 
that she was animated by a good healthy 


^be Sale of a Soul* 


139 


self-respect, in feeling ready to tear to 
pieces the woman whom her husband 
was feeding with dainties on the deck 
just above her head, and in symbolizing 
her feeling with a vehemence that was 
also very healthy. 

And Mr. Paddleford would have 
been quite right. 

The jealousy that set her on fire 
might have been regarded by anyone 
acquainted with the circumstances which 
led to her being aboard the steamer 
Demerara as quite unreasonable ; but 
Mr. Paddleford would have known that 
it indicated a healthy surging up of a 
wave of the true woman’s instinct. He 
would have known that the jargon 
about a woman’s soul, a woman’s pur- 
pose, a woman's love, which prevails in 
an artificial state of society, had not 
crushed out of her all the good, healthy, 
jealous, savage instinct of a woman 
made for the love of man and beloved 
by man. 

And Mr. Paddleford would have 
been quite right. 


CHAPTER XI. 


Solomon as a topic has not yet be- 
come exhausted, though his case has 
been a good deal talked about during 
the past three thousand years or there- 
abouts ; and this fact goes a long way, 
taken in connection with other cases of 
inferior importance which have occurred 
from time to time and have been duly 
chronicled, toward proving that as a 
topic there is hardly anything so interest- 
ing to the children of men — and their 
fathers and mothers — as the story of a 
clever man who makes a fool of himself. 

The passengers aboard the Demerara 
were singularly fortunate : they not only 
had their attention called to a clever 
man making a fool of himself, but they 
were provided with illustrations of the 
process daily ; and everyone knows that 
the illustrations add immeasurably to 
the interest of this particular story. 


140 


^be Sale of a SouU 141 

They are far more piquant than the 
illustrations attached to the much less 
interesting story of the foolish man who 
suddenly becomes wise. 

Now, when Stuart Forrest was fetch- 
ing and carrying for Mrs. Sargent, his 
movements, after the first day or two, 
ceased to be commented on. He had 
not a reputation for cleverness, so his 
making fool of himself was of no con- 
sequence. But so soon as Mr. Hadley 
had elbowed him out of the way, which 
he did with the greatest urbanity, but 
at the same time very effectually, and 
then began to make a fool of himself, the 
interest of everyone on deck and in the 
saloon was immediately aroused. 

Of course everyone said it was very 
sad to see so clever a man as Mr. 
Hadley turning out that way, for any 
ass should be able to see through the 
widow; but the sadness sat upon them 
very lightly. They were not quite dis- 
consolate. 

For two days Mr. Hadley devoted 
himself to the lady, and even gave up 
the pleasure of his nightly game of 


142 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


chess in order that he might enjoy a 
stroll with her on the deck beneath the 
splendid stars of the latitudes into which 
they were gliding ; and the passengers 
commented freely on all that they 
observed. 

Even the boy and girl shook their 
heads sadly at the goings on of people 
who should know better, and the boy 
illustrated, for the benefit of the girl — 
though it is doubtful if she was bene- 
fited thereby — some of these goings on. 

Then they made jokes together — the 
boy’s ideas of a joke were bounded by 
the pun: he said something about the 
widow’s cruise being a profitable one 
so far as she was concerned; and the 
introduction of a question of profit sug- 
gested to his prehensible imagination 
Elijah the prophet, and so forth. The 
girl said he must not be profane ; and 
he rejoined — the sea being quite calm 
and no storm anticipated — that the old 
prophets were rum Johnnies; and then 
he felt as clever as an avowed atheist 
expects to be thought. 

But Mrs. Darrell was very grave dur- 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


143 


ing these days. That was probably 
because she took good care to lose sight 
of none of the illustrations of the Clever 
Man Making a Fool of Himself — and 
being materially helped therein by a 
widow. She had turned her back upon 
Mr. Forrest and Mrs. Sargent when 
they had been Hampsteading together ; 
but now she never thought of turning 
away from Mr. Hadley and the same 
lady. She only relaxed her gravity 
when she saw the scowling face of Mr. 
Forrest also turned in the same direc- 
tion. Mr. Forrest's sulking was infi- 
nitely amusing to her. 

It was on the evening of the second 
day of Mr. Hadley’s visible attachment 
to Mrs. Sargent, that his friend Captain 
Baseden took his cigar out of his 
mouth — they were smoking together on 
the bridge — and said: 

“I wonder what it is you're up to, 
my friend." 

"Up to? What I am up to?" said 
Mr. Hadley. "My dear old man, I'm 
within reasonable distance of the great- 
est crisis in my life." 


144 


XLbc Sale of a Soul. 


“My God! you don’t mean to say 
that you have serious intentions?” cried 
the captain. 

“I have the most serious intentions 
that ever actuated me in any matter of 
my life,” said Claude Hadley. 

“Serious intentions? Serious inten- 
tions be d d. Oh, go and throw 

yourself over the stern of the ship at 
once. Serious intentions indeed!” 

“I’ll not be so inconsiderate of you 
and your ship. You’d be compelled to 
lower a boat.” 

“I wouldn’t, if I fancied for a mo- 
ment that you meant Oh, Lord! 

if you want to see all men on one level 
throw an unscrupulous woman among 
them! Why, man, that Mrs. Sargent, 
as she calls herself ” 

“Pah! what’s Mrs. Sargent?” 

•< “I could tell you that too, if you 
were to press me hard enough.” 

“I don’t require the information. I 
know all about her — well, perhaps not 
all — but enough. Let her be. I came 
here for a breath of fresh air, not to 
talk about Mrs. Sargent. I’ve been 


^be Sale of a SouL 145 

beside her for three hours. I want 
fresh air.” 

“Then what in the name ” 

“Ah, my dear Baseden, if you had 
eyes to see the tragedy that is being 
played on your deck — a tragedy, while 
you and the people down there fancy 
that it is a farce — you would be en- 
thralled, not amused.” 

“Great Lord! You are in earnest?” 

“In earnest! My God! I never 
knew before what it was to be in ear- 
nest. I tell you the next few days mean 
life or death to me — life or death!” 

The captain saw how he was trem- 
bling, and stared at him. Then he put 
out his hand, to him, saying: 

“May it be life! I have seen nothing 
except what everyone else seemed to 

see. That woman But we needn’t 

refer to her.” 

“No; we needn’t refer to her. She 
is not one of the persons of that tragedy 
which I spoke of just now,” said Mr. 
Hadley. 

“I suppose I'll know all some day,” 
said the captain. 


146 zbc Sale of a SouL 

“I question it very much,” said the 
other. 

Claude Hadley remained on the 
bridge of the steamer for some time 
longer, but no other word did he ex- 
change with his friend. The two stood 
apart, silently smoking. 

When Mr. Hadley went down the rail 
to the deck, he hastened to the side of 
Mrs. Sargent — passing his wife without 
so much as a glance — to assure that lady 
that she had won the bet which she had 
made with him regarding the run of 
the vessel for the twenty-four hours 
ending at noon that day. He had been 
to ask the captain, he said. Then there 
was some talk (with an effort at meas- 
urement, very diverting to the rest of 
the passengers) in respect of the exact 
size of a glove worn by Mrs. Sargent. 

After dinner Agnes came suddenly 
upon Stuart Forrest. He was stand- 
ing pretty far aft, leaning over one 
of the lifeboats, smoking. He was 
alone. 

He started when she came beside him 


^Tbe Sale of a Soul. 147 

and spoke to him. They had not ex- 
changed a word for some days. 

“It is not strange that we should both 
be led to the same spot,” said she. 
“We have both the same feeling, I know^ 
— to get away from those horrid 
people.” 

“Yes, yes; that’s true,” said he. 

“I am so sorry for you, Stuart,” said 
she. 

“How? Sorry for me? You?” he 
cried. 

“I have seen all that you have suf- 
fered on my account.” 

“Have you? You have seen what a 
snob that man is, making up his mind 
to cut me out just for the fun of the 
thing. Of course, he’s a Member of 
Parliament, and people who don’t know 
what a poor lot they are fancy that it’s a 
great distinction. That’s what he has 
traded on. Such snobbery ! You saw 
it all.” 

“I saw it all. He did it before my 
very eyes. But, after all, he has re- 
lieved you from an odious self-imposed 
task.” 


148 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


“Task! What task?” 

“I saw it all and pitied you. I saw 
that you were — well, sitting beside that 
deadful woman and — and talking with 
her very often, so that those horrid 
passengers might never be led to sus- 
pect that you and I were — were bound 
to one another.” 

“Oh, so far as that is concerned ” 

“Don’t make light of it ; it must have 
been odious to you. And you played 
the part so well! But I really don’t 
think that you need trouble yourself 
farther in that way. He has relieved 
you from the necessity. He is sitting 
with her in the saloon just now. They 
are drinking champagne.” 

“Dammim !” 

“We now know what sort of a man 
he is. Before my very eyes! Such a 
woman! What a creature! Such 
women should be sent to the pillory ! ’ ’ 

He made no motion of acquiescence. 
He turned and leaned with his arms 
upon the gunwale of the lifeboat. He 
seemed thinking out some point. He 
suddenly turned to her. 


Cbc Sale of a Soul. 149 

“Agnes,” said he, “I’ve never 
doubted you — have I, now?” 

“Doubted me?” said she inquiringly. 

“No, I’ve never doubted you. And 
if, even now, you should tell me that 
you’ve made up your mind that you 
acted too hastily. I’ll not reproach you. 
No, by Heaven! no word of reproach 
shall pass my lips.’’ 

“Too hastily?’’ she said. “Too 
hastily? What can you mean, Stuart?” 

“I mean, you know, that if, on 
thinking the matter over calmly and dis- 
passionately, you have come to the con- 
clusion not to face the world by my 
side, — you know what the world is, 
Agnes, cruel, unforgiving, remorseless, 
Pharisaical, — I will bear the blow with 
fortitude. I will still say, ‘God bless 
you!’ I am a man. I will not shrink 
from the burden, though I shall carry 
it with me to the grave. It is not too 
late for you to decide, Agnes.” 

Her heart began to beat rather wildly. 

It was as if he had opened before her 
eyes a way of escape from all that she 
was suffering; it was as if he had shown 


Zhc Sale of a SouL 


150 

her a door — a side door, but still wide 
enough — by which she could make her 
way out of a prison house into the 
bountiful fresh air beyond its walls. 
But then there surged up within her 
quite another feeling. Was it a feeling 
of vanity? Perhaps so. At any rate, 
she seemed to be pointing a mocking 
finger against herself, crying, “The 
woman with the high purpose ! 
Whither has that purpose melted? A 
purpose of snow ! The semblance of a 
purpose that passes into air when a 
breath blows upon it!” No, no, no — 
a thousand times no; she would not 
go back upon herself, upon her reso- 
lution. 

“It is too late,” she said. “I am 
not one of those women who fancy they 
are strong, but who do not know their 
own minds — their own hearts. I will 
be true to you, Stuart; I will be true 
to myself — to my own purpose — my 
own determination. I told Mrs. Dar- 
rell a week ago that Mr. Hadley had no 
wife. He has no wife.” 

“But he knows that I have never so 


TTbe Sale of a Soul* 15 1 

much as kissed you — surely you told 
him that?” he cried. 

‘‘He knows it,” she said. 

“And if you went back with him by 
the next steamer no one would be the 
wiser — no one could know that you had 
left him to meet me. Think of it, 
Agnes! Think of it!” 

‘‘No, no, no! I will not think of it — 
not for a moment,” she cried, rather 
wildly. She seemed to know that to 
give the proposition a thought would 
be fatal to her resolution. She had 
grasped his arm the moment he had 
spoken. She saw him glance anxiously 
around as she did so. He was afraid 
that someone might notice her incau- 
tiousness. She loosed her grasp upon 
him. There was a pause. ‘‘No, 
Stuart,” she said at last, in a voice that 
was better controlled. ‘‘No; I will 
not go back. He has shown that he 
cares nothing for me.” 

‘‘He followed you aboard the 
steamer,” said he. 

She looked at him. He was actually 
pleading the cause of her husband — 


152 


Zbc Sale of a Soul, 


trying to make her believe that he still 
cared for her! Only for a second, 
however, did she retain the effects of 
the little shock that the reflection caused 
her. Then she seemed to appreciate 
the spirit in which his suggestion was 
made. 

“I know your generosity,” said she. 
‘T know that you appreciate the grav- 
ity of the step which I am taking, and 
you fear that I may not have duly 
weighed the consequences. What you 
have said would possibly have some 
force with ordinary women — women 
whose aim in life is simply to be pro- 
vided with a home, who think that 
marriage is nothing more than a legal 
contract, made by a man to provide a 
woman with a home and to keep her in 
certain comforts in exchange for her 
society, her obedience, her docility. 
Such women are plentiful enough ; but 
I am not one of them. Stuart, you and 
I have set out on a new way, and we 
shall tread it together. It is not a 
marriage, this union of ours — it is the 
sale of a soul. I have said those words 


Ubc Sale of a Soul, 153 

in your hearing long ago, and you 
understood what they meant.” 

She put out her hand to him. He 
took it — not passionately, not heartily, 
but limply. This was more of his 
generosity. 

She turned quickly and hurried down 
the deck without another word. 

When a woman has made up her 
mind that she is not as other women 
are she is usually able to foster the 
delusion by getting rid of her judg- 
ment. She becomes like the child who 
declares that day is night, and brings 
itself to believe that it has spoken the 
truth by shutting its eyes for five 
minutes. 

And thus it is that with such women 
introspection is the most convincing 
form of self-deception. 

It was nothing to Agnes Hadley that 
the people around her regarded Stuart 
Forrest as a poor kind of man: she had 
long ago made up her mind that he was 
the only man in the world who under- 
stood her. If the people around her 
failed to appreciate him, did not that 


154 Zbc Sale of a Soul. 

very fact show that she was not as other 
people? 

It was nothing to her that she felt a 
chill come over her as she parted from 
Stuart Forrest after his hand had 
dropped limply from hers. She had 
long ago made up her mind that he was 
a generous man, therefore she felt that 
it was almost gross on her part to think 
that the limpness of his response to the 
pressure of her hand was not due to 
generosity on his part — to his desire to 
use no undue influence with her to effect 
his own ends; his own ends being, of 
course, to have her by his side always. 

It was nothing to her that she lay 
awake all that night in a passion of jeal- 
ousy at the thought that that woman 
who was located in a stateroom not far 
from the cabin occupied by herself, 
would, probably, in the course of some 
months, be driving behind the ponies 
which she, Agnes, had driven, and most 
likely — for she knew how atrocious was 
the taste of that woman — carrying out a 
new scheme of decoration in the bou- 
doir which had been furnished after a 


Zbc Sale of a SouU 155 

perfect French model by Mr. Hadley’s 
wife. 

She clenched her hands at the 
thought, until their palms were bleeding 
where her nails had bitten into them, 
and she whispered, with her face down- 
ward upon her pillow : 

“Kill her, kill her, kill her, O God!” 

And yet she was ready to thank her 
God that she herself was not as other 
women. 


CHAPTER XII. 


When Agnes awoke from the fitful 
sleep to which she had yielded toward 
morning, it was to find that the steamer 
was staggering through a heavy sea. A 
gale was blowing furiously, and the 
decks were deluged fore and aft. The 
day was a miserable one, and contrasted 
sadly with the brilliant weather that had 
preceded it. 

The captain, being well aware of the 
fact that the passengers aboard an ocean 
liner invariably hold its commander ac- 
countable for the quality of the weather, 
took good care to keep on the bridge 
and in his own cabin, where beyond 
these voices there is peace. Several in- 
formal indignation meetings were held 
in the saloon, the smoking room, and 
elsewhere, and resolutions were passed, 
nem. con,^ protesting against the con- 
tinuance of the gale. 

xs6 


Ztc Sale of a Soul. 


157 


Such weather is not conducive to the 
exchange of tender passages between 
any two persons. A rainy week may 
turn the most promising honeymoon 
into a Slough of Despond, and spoil the 
prospects of two lives by causing each 
to know the other too abruptly. Mr. 
Hadley, consequently, did not give up 
to the widow what was meant for man- 
kind — or at least that section of man- 
kind which was to be found in the 
saloon of the Demerara : he did not try 
to enliven Mrs. Sargent to the exclusion 
of the rest of the passengers. And it 
was generally admitted that it was 
the influence of his good spirits alone 
that prevented his fellow-passengers 
from being overcome by the hardship 
of their situation. 

He spread good humor around, and 
played to perfection the r6le of the 
prophet of fair things. The gale, he 
said, was only a freak — a slight dif- 
ference of opinion between the powers 
of the air. It was ^olus with influenza 
—nothing serious. Disagreeable, to be 
sure, while it lasted; but how long would 


158 


XTbe Sale of a Soul. 


it last? it had come as a thief in the 
night, and it would pass away with the 
same suddenness. By the next dawn 
there would be no trace of its footsteps 
on the sea. 

It was impossible for Agnes to refrain 
from admiring the spirit which her hus- 
band displayed during this trying day. 
She came within the scope of his in- 
fluence. She could not resist it; and 
before evening she felt quite miserable 
through reflecting upon her own weak- 
ness in this respect. 

Great Heaven! Was it possible that 
she — she — Agnes Hadley, was, after all, 
not different from the other women 
who were cheered by Mr. Hadley’s 
cheerfulness? 

The thought made her feel quite 
miserable ; but when, after a dinner of 
many misadventures in the way of 
revolutionary soup and riotous entries^ 
she retired to her berth, she found that 
she had reached the weeping stage of 
her misery. She put her face down to 
her pillow and wept, not in passion, but 
in self-pity. 


ZTbc Sale ot a Soul. 


159 


She had been weak enough to allow 
herself to be carried away by the influ- 
ence of the man who, she knew, had 
never understood her since they had 
come together — the man who was ready 
to resent her aspiration toward individu- 
ality, and who expected her (though he 
had never said as much) to merge herself 
in him ; and now she was weeping her 
bitter, silent tears of vexation at her 
own weakness in failing to hold out 
against his influence. All the old 
admiration which she had experienced 
in regard to him in the days before he 
had asked her to be his wife, returned 
to her, and therefore she wept. 

He had conquered her in those old 
days, when (as she thought) she had 
not been able to differentiate between 
the impulse to give the devotion of 
admiration to a man possessing the 
qualities that appeal to the imagina- 
tion of a girl, and the impulse to 
give the devotion of a woman’s love 
to such a man ; hence (as she thought) 
the great mistake which she had 
made. 


i6o xLbc Sale of a SouL 

But now she knew the difference (she 
thought) between the two. 

Suddenly she found herself sitting up 
on the mattress, staring blankly at the 
glass of the porthole, against which, 
every" how and again, the white flapping 
wing of a wave brushed, for a voice 
seemed to have spoken into her ear 
the words that the South Sea trader 
had spoken on the deck some days 
before : 

“The conviction that makes a woman 
run away from her husband is the con- 
viction that she has still the power to 
make men love her with a passionate 
love.*' 

And then another voice seemed to say 
to her: 

“That was your conviction; that was 
your purpose; that was your high aim.” 

“You are exactly the same as other 
women,” shrieked a third voice in a 
feminine falsetto. 

“Vanity — vanity — vanity; your 
womanly conviction was the result of 
your womanly vanity ; your noble pur- 
pose was the result of an ignoble vanity. 


XLbc Sale of a Soul. i6i 

You have never known yourself, but 
you are going to know yourself: the 
lesson is coming.” 

That was the appalling terzetto that 
rang around her as she sat there in the 
darkness, staring in blank amazement 
at the gray glass of the port, against 
which the waves crashed at intervals. 

And the worst of the matter was that 
she seemed to have heard each of those 
voices before, only none of them had 
been so loud, so strident, so triumphant 
before. They had spoken to her in 
whispers, and she had disregarded 
them . A voice had whispered, ‘ ‘ V anity, 
vanity,” in her ear long ago. Another 
had murmured, “It is because your hus- 
band knows you better than you know 
yourself that you are anxious to leave 
him.” Another still had said, “To be 
very jealous is to be a very woman.” 

She had disregarded them all in the 
past, but now they would not be dis- 
regarded. 

She sprang from her mattress and 
threw a thick cloak around her, and 
rushed from her cabin. But even then 


1 62 zbc Sale ot a Soul. 

she heard one of the voices crying in 
mockery: 

“A woman — a woman — a very 
woman ! It is only a woman who tries 
to rush away from her own conscience, 
from her real self. ’ ' 

She rushed from the cabin. 

She never returned to it. 

She was face to face with the black- 
ness of darkness on the deck. It seemed 
to her, coming out from the brightly 
lighted saloon, that she had never before 
known what darkness meant. She 
stood for some moments to the lee of a 
deck house, her hands grasping the 
brass rail, for the ship was rolling in 
the heavy seas that were still running, 
though the gale had abated, and there 
was only the shrill whistle of the wind 
among the rigging. Now and again a 
strain was put upon her hands to sustain 
their grasp of the brass rail as the 
steamer rolled immediately after her 
bows had pitched high above the water, 
with the swish of the sea that had been 
shipped running along the scuppers, 
and then, with the next plunge, lapping 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 163 

the deck-house and the coaming of the 
hatches. 

What thought was it that came to her 
at the moment that the vessel remained 
on even keel? 

If she were to loose her hold at the 
next plunge what would happen? 

‘ ‘I wouldn't let go if I were you ; this 
momentary steadiness means nothing.” 

She started. How had he come be- 
side her? Had he followed her up 
from the saloon? How had he known 
the thought that came into her mind at 
that moment? 

“Did you come up to prevent my 
throwing myelf overboard?” she said, 
with a laugh that had a note of wild- 
erness in it. 

“If you had not given that laugh I 
might have gone below again,” said he. 
“I’ll not go below now.” 

“You gave it to me as your opinion 
some time ago that I was the sort of 
woman who would jump overboard the 
day before the steamer came to land,” 
said she. “That was why I laughed.” 

“Yes; I thought as much,” said he. 


164 


XLbc Sale of a Soul, 


“We are not within four days of 
land,” said she. “Oh, go away — go 
away. You will make me laugh 
again. ’ ’ 

He did not reply. The steamer 
trembled as a great wave rushed beneath 
her keel — trembled, and then gave a 
roll that splashed the water in the scup- 
pers over the bulwarks at the lee side. 
The man and his wife held on to the 
brass rail. In another moment the deck 
was level once more. There was a 
little surging of water on the deck 
under the grating where they stood. 

“What do you want with me at this 
time?” she asked, after a long pause. 

He made her no answer. 

“What do you want with me?” she 
asked again, turning her face toward his. 
In the little gleam of light that came 
through the window of the deck-house, 
to the lee of which they were standing, 
she could not perceive the expression 
upon his face. Still he made no reply. 
“Why have you come to my side?” she 
said. “Cannot you hear me when I 
speak? You must hear: the wind has 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 165 

gone down. You said it would go 
down, and the women in the saloon be- 
lieved you. From the way they talk of 
you one would fancy that they thought 
you had great influence with the powers 
of the air. Why do you come to me 
now?” 

“I come to you because I love you, 
and because you love me,” said her 
husband. 

She stared at him for a long time, 
breathless with amazement. The bitter 
tone that had been in her words was 
emphasized in the laugh that she now 
gave. 

“You are a fool!” she cried. “I 
have told you that I do not love you, 
and I know that you do not love me. 
Go away from me. I cannot bear you 
to be near me. Oh, go away and 
whisper comfort to that woman to whom 
you have become devoted. I don’t 
need your comfort. It means nothing 
to me.” 

“You have not yet learned the 
truth,” said he. 

“The truth? Oh, yes; I learned the 


1 66 zbc Sale of a Soul. 

truth long ago — months ago — years 
ago.” 

“You haven’t learned the truth. 
And yet you are a woman.” 

“The truth?” 

“You haven't yet learned what is 
in your own heart because you are a 
woman.” 

‘ ‘ Speak out what you wish to convey to 
me ; but don’t say again that I love you.” 

“Supposing I were to say to you now 
that my reason in coming beside you 
was to tell you that you were at liberty 
to enter upon any new scheme of life 
that you have planned for yourself?” 

“What have you said?” 

“Don’t loose your hold upon the 
rail.” 

“Supposing that my new scheme of 
life involves loosing my hold upon the 
rail?” 

“Listen to me, Agnes. When a 
woman leaves her husband and goes to 
another man, the law of our land per- 
mits the husband to obtain a divorce in 
six months. That is a reasonable pro- 
vision. It allows the woman to begin 


trbe Sale of a Soul, 167 

life once more as the wife of the man 
whom she prefers to her husband. 
Shall I give you your freedom? Shall 
I return to England by the next steamer, 
leaving you by the side of your lover?” 

She clutched at the brass rail, though 
the ship had not given a roll, and her 
hand came upon his, which rested on 
the rail. She snatched her hand back 
with a cry. Then the ship rolled, but 
she allowed her body to sway with the 
roll, so that she did not need a support. 
Both her hands were pressed against her 
heart. 

“You make this proposition to me?” 
she said. “You who told me just now 
that you loved me? I know what it 
means. It is not my freedom which 
you seek, but your own. The law of 
the land permits the husband to marry 
again when the divorce is pronounced, 
and you have already made your selec- 
tion. That woman ! That creature 
who flatters you, and who listens to 
your flatteries daily — it is she whom 
you have chosen before my very eyes to 
be your new wife.” 


i68 


Zbc Sale ot a Soul. 


“That is the reproach which comes 
from you, Agnes?” said he. 

“Oh, I know what you mean to say: 
you think that I should be the last per- 
son in the world to cast such a reproach 
in your face. But the woman — such a 
woman! You would disgrace yourself 
in the eyes of all the world. You have 
already made yourself the laughing- 
stock of the steamer! No — no — no, 
Claude ! I will do anything you please 
— I will go back with you — anything 
— anything — anything to save you from 
the disgrace — from the clutches of that 
creature — that har — harpy. ’ ’ 

“Supposing I refuse to take you back 
with me?” 

“Then I shall kill her — I shall kill 
her!” 

“You feel that — you feel that you 
could kill her; and yet you say that 
you do not love me? Great Heavens! 
are you a woman? My beloved, you 
love me. Come to me, Agnes, my 
wife.” 

She looked at him ; wonder was in 
her eyes. Then a strange, strong light 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


169 


seemed to blaze before her, and with 
a cry she put up her hands to her 
eyes. 

His arms were about her — only for an 
instant, however; then he had caught 
both her hands in one of his and was 
pointing to the window of the deck- 
house against which they were leaning. 
The window was open to the extent of 
an inch. (It was on the leeward side.) 
The sound of a laugh — half-smothered 
— came to her ears — a woman’s laugh — 
she knew it. She would have moved 
away, for the window was only a few 
inches from her ear ; but he held her 
hands in a vise — his right hand grasped 
the brass rail. The sound of the voices 
of the two persons within the deck- 
house came clearly to those outside. 

“You are the fool!” they heard the 
man say. ‘ ‘You fancy that he is in love 
with you?” 

“And why shouldn’t he be, if he 
wishes and if I wish, my good fellow?” 
came the voice of the woman. “Do 
you suppose that you could interfere 
with us, Mr. Forrest?” 


Zbc Sale ot a Soul. 


170 

“Didn’t you agree to land with me 
at the first of the islands?” said he. 

“Did I?” she laughed. “Ah, that 
was before he came on the scene. I 
reckon that I’ve changed my mind. 
Circumstances alter cases, Mr. Forrest. 
Take your hand from about my waist, 
young man.” 

“I swear to you that I’m true!” he 
cried. “It is he who is false.” 

“Now, now, you don’t better your 
case by slander, Mr. Forrest.” 

“He is false as hell! He has a wife 
already.” 

“You are a pretty liar, Mr. Forrest,” 

“He has a wife, and she is aboard 
this steamer into the bargain.” 

“What magazine do you write for?” 

“You fool! You deserve to suffer 
for throwing me over. I wish I didn’t 
love you as I do. Listen to me. To- 
morrow go up to the woman who calls 
herself Mrs. Clarence and address her 
as Mrs. Hadley, and watch her face.” 

“Great Lord! Great Lord! I’ll do 
it — by the Lord ’ ’ 

Agnes heard no more. The hand 


Zbc Sale ot a Soul. 171 

that had forced her to remain beside 
the window now drew her away from it. 

She had her hands upon his shoulderSc 
Their faces were close together, and 
then 

Then there came before their eyes 
the blaze of a red and a green light — 
out from the blackness of the sea ; then 
there came the shriek of a steamer’s 
whistle, a yell from many voices out of 
the blackness, the tinkle of an engine- 
room telegraph. 

Claude Hadley put his wife’s hand 
down to the brass rail, and tore for the 
wheelhouse, yelling: 

“Hard-a-port! for God’s sake!” 

To the sound of a scream of terror 
and the horrible blasphemies which 
burst from men’s lips when death stares 
them in the face, and their faces be- 
come like the face of death, the stranger 
steamer struck the Demerara and 
ground into her plates a foot or twa 
abaft the funnel. 


CHAPTER XIII. 


The collision between the steamers 
took place at the exact moment when 
the Demerara was righting herself from 
a roll to the quarter on which she was 
struck. Claude Hadley felt the iron 
handrail, which he had grasped in the 
act of climbing to the bridge, ripped 
away from his hands as though it were 
lemonade wire, and he was whirled 
about for a second or two before he was 
flung on the deck. He caught hold of 
an iron stanchion as the steamer was 
forced almost on her beam ends by the 
sheer weight of the mass of metal that 
was grinding through her. A roll of 
green sea came over the submerged rail 
and swept his body round as it plunged 
aft; but still he held on to the iron 
stanchion, and as the steamer slowly 
righted herself and shook herself free 
from the other with the quivering excite- 


172 


XLbc Sale of a Soul» 173 

ment of a buffalo ridding itself of a wolf, 
he got upon his feet. 

He was in the midst of a world of 
clamor — appalling, deafening. The 
horrible strident blast of the steam 
rushing through the waste pipe was the 
background of sound, so to speak, 
against which all the other sounds 
were defined — coarsely, irregularly, in- 
termittently. The hissing of cold water 
upon the engine-room furnaces ; the 
cries of the men who, he knew, must be 
scalded to death coming hollowly up 
through the grating from the bowels 
of the ship; the hysterical scream of 
women, like the shrill agony of a 
wounded horse on a field of battle; — 
through all the voice of the captain roar- 
ing out orders, and the signals of the 
boatswain’s whistle. It was a discord 
of demons — the revelry of a pande- 
monium. 

The clouds of vapor that arose 
through the engine-room gratings rolled 
along the decks and formed an impene- 
trable mist. Its clouds glowed here and 
there with the lurid reflection of the 


174 


Zbc Sale of a Soul, 


open furnaces below, and the masthead 
lights and the deck lanterns glowed 
whitely through the hot vapor. 

Claude Hadley stumbled against a 
man. He saw that the man was the 
chief engineer. 

“Flooded?” he shouted. 

“Flooded,” responded the engineer. 
“A plate is bandboxed. We’ll float a 
quarter of an hour. ’ ’ 

Another man slung himself down from 
the bridge and dropped beside him — 
the captain. 

“For God’s sake, Hadley, climb to 
my room and put a revolver in your 
pocket. Speak to the passengers. The 
boats will carry all. We may float for 
half an hour. All the compartments are 
closed.” 

“The other steamer?” 

“Sheered off — as usual.” 

The oath that followed was repeated 
between his teeth by Hadley. Then 
the captain, with the second officer hold- 
ing a lantern, rushed to the gap in the 
bulwarks above the iron plate, which 
the light of the lantern showed to him 


ITbe Sale of a SouU 175 

like the lid of a bandbox that has been 
smashed in. 

But before he had time to see the plate, 
Hadley had entered the captain’s cabin 
and had felt around the wall for a revolver, 
which he slipped into his breast pocket. 

He had not left the room when the 
captain appeared. 

“News?” said Hadley. 

“Half an hour then, twenty-six min- 
utes now. You have the revolver?” 

‘ ‘In my pocket. What’s the strength 
of your company?” 

“Hundred and twenty-two, all told. 
Six boats.” 

“Room?” 

“Just do it — take us all we know. 
Talk to the passengers. They believe 
in you. Don’t be afraid of the revolver. 
Women and children first. Boat by 
boat. Shoot any man who moves out 
of his place.” 

Claude Hadley lowered himself to the 
deck and went to where the passengers 
were clinging together around the deck- 
house. Only a few of the women were 
hysterical. The others were calm. 


176 


XLhc Sale of a Soul* 


Some of the men, with the wildness of 
cowardice, were cursing everything con- 
nected with the sea. Others were try- 
ing to make light of what had occurred, 
believing that the women understood 
nothing. The electric lights had all 
been extinguished, but other lamps had 
been lighted. Mr. Hadley was recog- 
nized as he came up. 

He was assailed for news. 

“Bad news,” he cried — he had to 
shout in order to be heard — “bad 
news; but not the worst. We may 
have to be in the boats for some hours ; 
but the boats will hold all. Not a 
moment should be lost. Women and 
children first, of course. No; don’t 
think of going below for anything. 
Every moment may mean a life. 
Remember that everything depends on 
your calmness and courage.” 

Then came cries and shrieks, absurd 
protests, foolish words of ludicrous 
indignation, a fierce threat to write to 
the Times^ at which no one laughed, a 
few passionate prayers, a hundred wild 
blasphemies. 


Zbc Sale of a Soul, 


177 


“For God’s sake, silence!” shouted 
Hadley. “Stand by the boats. No 
overcrowding. Every word of the 
captain’s must be obeyed.” 

“Who are you, anyway?” came a 
man’s voice. “You’re not the captain. 
Everyone for himself, say I.” 

“I’m a man with a revolver,” said 
Hadley. “And, by God, I’ll use it if 
the time comes!” 

“I’m with you, sir,” came the voice 
of the South Sea trader. “There’s 
another revolver by you, Mr. Hadley. 
That means safety.” 

“Stand by that I#ng boat until the 
captain gives the word to launch it, 
Paddleford. You know the business.” 

“No fears.” 

The after part of the steamer was 
getting low in the water. The helpless 
fabric was rolling about between the 
seas. Clamor and cheers amidships 
filled the air. One of the boats was 
being lowered from the davits for- 
ward. 

The chief officer and four seamen 
appeared among the saloon passengers. 


178 


Zbc Sale of a Soul, 


“I’m in command, Mr. Hadley,” 
said the officer. 

“Where’s the captain?” 

“In the stern sheets of the galley just 
launched. A spar fell on his head. 
An ugly wound — he’s insensible. Take 
some of the women for’ard, sir. The 
gigs are there. Men, stand by to 
heave.” 

Mr. Hadley and the ship’s surgeon 
scarcely managed to overtake the crowd 
who had heard the chief officer’s words 
and had rushed forward in the direc- 
tions of the gigs. A fierce struggle was 
going on around a boat that was hang- 
ing in its davits just abaft the bridge, 
and the effect of the commotion began 
to be felt among the hurrying crowd of 
saloon passengers. A panic was im- 
minent, as women dragged women back, 
and men struggled forward in their 
places with their hands tearing at the 
tarpaulin that stretched from gunwale 
to gunwale of one of the gigs. 

Claude Hadley and the third officer, 
who was a young fellow with muscles, 
threw themselves between the men and 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 


179 


the boat, striking to right and left. 
Half a dozen seamen forced themselves 
into the gap that had been made. 
Then came the sound of a shot — a 
second — a third — from another part of 
the ship where the commotion was 
loudest. The effect was instantaneous. 
Out came Claude Hadley’s revolver — 
the officer had one also. 

“Keep back! I fire when I count 
three,” shouted the former. “Keep 
back all ! One — two ’ * 

Back the eager crowd surged, and 
the seamen hauled the boat up, swung 
it round, and stood by the falls to lower 
away. Two sailors held the bow and 
the stern with boathooks when the gig 
was in the water, and the women were 
lowered down the side of the ship and 
forced into their places by the officer. 

“Three more and push off,” came 
his shout. 

In a moment Mrs. Darrell, a steward- 
ess, and a girl were over the side, and 
the boat was whirled away into the 
darkness. 

The remaining women had not 


i8o XL\)C Sale of a Soul. 

waited after the officer’s words were 
shouted up. They had rushed to an- 
other of the boats that was being 
launched, and got places in time. 
Hadley just arrived at the ship’s quarter 
to see the boat push off. It was packed 
with women and men. He ran with 
several other men to where the fifth 
boat was being launched on the star- 
board side amidships. The men were 
over the side and the boat had disap- 
peared before he came up. He alone 
remained at that part of the deck. 

There came a shout from the chief 
officer at the sixth boat of “One more ! ’ ’ 

Hadley ran for the boat. A man 
rushed past him. It was a race for life. 
The boat had already been pushed off 
and was some yards away; but the 
other man sprang upon the bulwarks — 
Claude Hadley saw that he was Stuart 
Forrest — and without the hesitation of 
a second leaped off into the water be- 
side the boat. 

With a cheer he was lifted over the 
gunwale. 

Claude Hadley stood alone upon the 


^be Sale of a Soul. i8i 

deck of the steamer. He saw in a mo- 
ment that the boat would be swamped 
by another person. It was too deep in 
the water as it was. 

“Great God!” 

She had come beside him out of the 
darkness. 

“We are together,” she said. 

He got upon the bulwarks. 

“For God’s sake!” he yelled. 
“There’s a woman still. Come back 
for her.” 

“The boat’s too full already,” came 
in chorus from many voices of men and 
women who knew that death was behind 
them. 

“A woman !” shouted Hadley. “A 
man will give up his place to her. 
Is there not a man aboard the boat? 
Stuart Forrest, the woman you took 
away from her home is on the deck. 
Save your soul by giving her your 
place.” 

“Row on, for God’s sake, row on!” 
shouted Stuart Forrest. 

“Coward! ruffian! you have mur- 
dered a woman!” cried Hadley. 


i 82 


^be Sale ot a SouU 


The oars were dipped. 

Suddenly there was a movement on 
the gunwale of the boat, a movement, a 
whine, a splash in the water. 

“Only a dog; row away," came a 
voice from the boat. 

It was only a dog that had sprung into 
the sea out of a boatful of men. 

"Jim, Jim! Ah, he heard you!" 
cried the woman. 

She sent her voice over the water en- 
couraging the dog. Her husband low- 
ered himself by a line down the 
steamer’s side, and when a wave swept 
the fox terrier within reach, he picked 
him up and threw him on deck. 

“My faithful Jim! And they said, 
^Only adog.’ " 


CHAPTER XIV. 


She was in her husband’s arms. 

“At last — at last, my beloved!’’ she 
said. 

“Yes; at last,’’ said he. “The cap- 
tain said thirty minutes — ten of them 
have passed. Why did you not go 
with the other women, Agnes?’’ 

“Why should I be the one to live — I 
who brought you to your death for my 
sake? I knew that you would be the 
last on deck, and I hid myself in the 
deck-house that I might be with you to 
the end.’’ 

‘ ‘ Sixteen minutes. W ell, you are with 
me. You heard the man shout for one 
more in the boat?’’ 

“I prayed that you might be that one. 
But you were not.’’ 

“No, I was not. Thank God that 
we are together!’’ 

“Ah, Claude, you should have lived 
183 


184 


Zbc Sale ot a Soul. 


— death have been for me alone. Was 
there ever such baseness as mine? 
Never-never; for there never was 
such goodness as yours. Ah, God! 
what was I, to talk of understanding 
you? I never saw a man until to-night. 
Blind! blind! I was blind before to- 
night, my beloved.” 

She lay in his arms. He kissed her 
wonderingly. She was not trembling in 
the least, though she knew that death 
must be at hand. 

Death? What! was this refinement 
of fate’s cruelty to bring them together, 
heart and soul, only to drown them in 
each other’s arms? 

‘‘Great Heavens!” he cried; ‘‘can we 
do nothing? Can we not prolong our 
minutes into hours? Even an hour of 
life like this with you would contain 
more happiness than God grants to 
many lives. Is the ship going down 
under us?” 

It was surely going down, but slowly. 
The stern was visibly lower than it had 
been ten minutes before. But the 
water-tight compartments aft remained 


^be Sale of a Soul, 185 

intact. No bulkhead had given way, 
though the water had flooded the 
engine-room through the ripped plate. 

“If it would float for an hour!” he 
cried. “Give me an hour — half an 
hour!” 

“We shall have an hour. God is 
good ! ’ ’ 

He laughed. She had never neg- 
lected her prayers. 

He stood for a moment lost in 
thought. 

She patted the head of the fox terrier. 

“Half an hour — half an hour!” he 
cried. “We shall do it between us.” 

“Oh, give me something to do with 
you! I aways wanted to help you in 
your work, dearest,” she said. 

“You shall do it now. Go into every 
deck cabin and carry out the cork 
mattress it contains — mattresses and 
air-cushions will keep us afloat if we 
only have time to build the roughest of 
rafts.” 

She ran toward the deck cabins be- 
fore he had finished his sentence. He 
waited for a moment considering what 


i86 


^be Sale cf a Soul. 


was to be done first. Then he sprang 
upon the bulwarks with a knife, and 
swung inboard the davits of the boat 
which had been launched last. He cut 
the lashings of the davits’ boom, and 
it dropped on the deck. In another 
instant he was on the opposite quarter, 
and had secured a second boom. Two 
other spars he got from the forward 
davits and carried aft, crossing the ends, 
and lashing them into a solid frame, 
fifteen feet square. He cut adrift four 
life-buoys, and made one fast at each 
angle. Then he lashed a triangle of 
oars — a dozen were lying about the 
decks, having been thrown out of the 
boats to give more room — across the 
framework of spars; and upon this 
solid foundation he laid half-a-dozen 
wooden gratings, lacing them down, 
and binding them to the oars and 
booms. In the center he laid three of 
the deck chairs folded down. 

Then he turned to the cork mattresses 
which Agnes had collected from the 
cabins, and, with her help, he built 
these around the raft, making them fast 


Zbc Sale of a Soul. 187 

by their earings to the gratings, but 
putting none in the middle of the raft, 
so that here there was a hollow space, 
resembling the cockpit of a small yacht. 
Over the framework of the folded-down 
chairs he threw a dozen air-pillows and 
a couple of heavy tarpaulins. Finally, 
he made fast an oar with a timber hitch 
to the bulwark of mattresses, so as to 
be at his hand to fend off. 

It was a good hour’s work. The 
steamer was floating longer than the 
captain had believed it possible for her 
to keep from foundering. 

He had built the raft with one side 
propped up against the bulwarks under 
the davits from which the quarter boat 
had been lowered. The falls with their 
blocks were swaying and rattling against 
the side with every roll of the ship. 
He caught the hook of each block and 
made it fast to some of his lashings. 
Side by side they hauled at the lines 
until the raft was ready to swing over 
the bulwarks. They swung it clear, 
and lowered it to the water. The first 
wave that ran along the side of the ship 


1 88 ^be Sale of a Soul. 

swept it clean. He lowered himself by 
the falls: he had not far to drop, for 
the ship was going down by the stern. 
She dropped the dog into his hands. 

“Pull yourself together and get over 
the side,*’ he shouted. “I will prevent 
the line from swinging.” 

She did not need a word of encour- 
agement. She slid down into his arms, 
and he laid her in the center of the raft 
and cast off the hooks. He used the 
oar to keep the light fabric clear of the 
side of the ship; but in an instant a 
wave swept the raft along on its crest 
like a chip, and he shipped his oar and 
lashed it down once again. 

He sat down by her side and drew 
the lined tarpaulin over her head and 
his own, to shut out from her the terrify- 
ing sight of the riotous waves. The sea 
had gone down greatly during the night, 
and, viewed from the deck of the 
steamer, the waves did not seem for- 
midable; but they could not be seen 
from the raft without terror. They 
were mountains rolling down upon the 
frail craft ; and the woman had covered 


Zbc Sale of a Soul, 189 

her face with her hands. As he put 
his arms about her and held her close to 
him he felt that now she was trembling. 
When his arm was about her she clung 
to him. 

“Oh, to think of it! to think of it 
all, my beloved!” she said; her lips 
were close to his ear. “I brought you 
to this! Oh, why cannot I alone die? 
Oh, God is good ! He will let my death 
atone for all.” 

“We are together,” he said. “I 
would not be saved without you. We 
shall be saved together. We have as 
good a chance as the boats. We shall 
be picked up, never fear; and in the 
morning there will not be a wave.” 

What a night it was! More than 
once the raft was at the point of capsiz- 
ing on the crest of a wave, and they had 
both to hold on grimly by the lashings, 
to save themselves from being flung off. 
There was a ceaseless breaking of spray 
upon the tarpaulin over their heads, 
and now and again the raft was whirled 
curiously round when on the summit of 
a green sea, giving them the impression 


Zbc Sale ot a SouL 


190 

of fierce and strong hands, or the teeth 
of wild animals, struggling for posses- 
sion of them and their craft. 

For some hours they were tossed 
about frantically; but shortly after 
midnight it became plain to Claude 
Hadley that the sea was going down. 
That sickening jerking of the raft from 
crest to crest, which had made it neces- 
sary for him and his wife to keep their 
fingers constantly locked in the wet 
lashings, became less, and the splashing 
of the water over their heads decreased 
in violence. The motion of the raft 
became more like that of a cradle. 

She lay in his arms. She nestled to 
him as a sleepy child nestles to one in 
whom it has the completest trust. He 
spoke to her, but she did not reply ; and 
then, putting his face down to hers, he 
felt her warm breath on his cheek, and 
her long, even breathing, and he knew 
that she was asleep. 

He kept his arms about her as though 
he would hold her from the anger to 
which she was now unconscious. And 
his mind went back to the hour when 


Zbc Sale of a SouL 191 

she had first slept in his arms. Had 
she been right? Had he failed to un- 
derstand her nature, and all that she 
needed to satisfy her life? She had 
been wrong — desperately wrong — he 
knew; but had he been right? 

Had he not been content to give her 
only such things as satsified other 
women who were the wives of wealthy 
husbands, without taking thought to 
draw her closer to him by daily acts of 
sympathy — daily acts of appreciation? 
Should he not have known that every 
day which passes without drawing a 
husband and wife closer together, 
divides them the one from the other? 

When he had seen that she was be- 
coming dissatisfied with her life, had he 
taken any trouble to make it better for 
her? 

He had said something about taking 
a long holiday in Italy with her; but 
when she had coldly put aside the sug- 
gestion, he knew that he had merely 
said, “Very well, we shall stay at 
home,” and had resumed his own work 
— the pursuit of his own aims, his own 


192 


Zbc Sale of a Soul* 


ambitions — making no attempt to study 
her nature and to find out what were 
her disappointments. He had left her 
to her dreams — to those vague, intan- 
gible, indefinable longings, which every 
true woman has, and the endeavor to 
realize which sometimes causes the true 
woman to become false to herself, her 
nature, her husband. 

He had not understood her. He had 
not tried to guide her. He had not 
made her one with himself. He had 
not kept his arms about her to hold her 
from all danger. He had allowed the 
danger to overtake her, and she had 
been saved from it so as by fire. 

And now 

Well, now he had his arms about her. 

He had thoughts, hopes, fears, reso- 
lutions to occupy him during all this 
night; and still she slept in his arms, 
and the sea went down until at last the 
raft was rising and falling upon waters 
out of which all passion had died. 

He rang the chimes of his repeater 
watch more than once through the long 
night, and at last the hour that rang 


XTbe Sale of a Soul* 


193 


from it told him that the dawn should 
be in the sky. She awoke with a start 
and a cry. She put her hands about 
his neck and kissed him. 

He threw off the tarpaulin, and a long 
shaft of light from the half risen sun fled 
along the ridges of the waves, and 
showed him how pale was her face. 

He was looking at her face, but she 
was looking past him, and. there was a 
light in her eyes that was not a reflec- 
tion of the sun. He turned his head. 

Not a hundred yards away there was 
a ship swaying evenly among the waves. 

“We are saved!” he cried. “Our 
night is past; joy has come in the 
morning.” 

He got upon his feet and sent his 
voice out across the water in a hail. 

It was not responded to. Nor was 
his second hail. Then he saw that the 
vessel had lost a mast ; the sails hung in 
tatters between the yards, and the hull 
was so deep in the water that the waves 
of the night must have washed over her 
bulwarks. There was no sign of any 
living thing aboard. 


194 


Zbc Sale of a Soul, 


“A derelict!” he cried. “What a 
disappointment! But we shall board 
her; anything is better than this.” 

He unlashed his oar, and made it do 
duty for a scull. A quarter of an hour 
had passed before he sent the raft along- 
side the derelict craft. There was no 
need for a hand rail to climb on deck. 
The hull was sunk almost to the main 
chains. He helped her into the chains 
and then he got beside her, the dog 
under one of his arms, until he lifted 
it up to the bulwarks. He climbed 
there himself, and, stooping down, drew 
her up. 

The vessel was clearly a water-logged 
timber ship. She had had a deck-load 
of mahogany, and several logs were 
rolling about in the water which had 
been shipped during the night, and had 
not escaped through the scupper holes. 

The craft had a poop deck, and one 
of the hand rails was still intact. The 
deck was very sloppy; but the high 
poop was, of course, beyond the reach 
of the splashing seas. Claude Hadley 
helped his wife to this part of the craft. 


Zhc Sale of a SouU 


195 


“There may be something to eat 
aboard — something better than those 
things,” he said, as a number of rats 
ran along the planks and sat up like 
squirrels. 

It was not at the rats, however, that 
the fox terrier was barking so furi- 
ously — it was at something out at sea, 
on the opposite quarter of the vessel to 
that at which the boarding had been 
effected. 

Claude Hadley and his wife crossed 
the poop, and saw close under the 
quarter a capsized boat and a man 
clinging to the keel. The man raised 
his head. 

A startled exclamation came from 
her. She stared down at the boat. 
There was a long pause before she made 
a clutch at her husband’s arm, and 
cried wildly, “Kill him, kill him, kill 
him !” 

Claude Hadley stood there gazing 
down at the white face of Stuart 
Forrest. 

His left hand was holding both his 
wife’s hands, his right was thrust into 


196 


XLbc Sale ot a Soul. 


the breast pocket of his coat, and its 
fingers were about the stock of the 
revolver. 

He remembered having said to her, 
“I wonder will you ever ask me to kill 
him!” 

He stood irresolute for a few mo- 
ments, and in those few moments there 
came before his eyes a picture of what 
would have been had he not succeeded 
in coming between his wife and that 
man. 

“I will kill him, by God!” said 
Claude Hadley. 

He drew out the revolver, and cocked 
it. 

She gave a cry, for at that moment 
the strength of the wretch who had 
been clinging to the boat gave way, 
and he fell back with the helpless 
plunge of a dead body into the sea. 

Claude Hadley cursed through his 
set teeth, and tossed the revolver over- 
board. It struck the keel of the boat 
and the charge exploded. He stood 
silent for some time, then seated him- 
self on a locker, and covered his face 



HE FELL BACIC WITH THE HELPLESS PLUNGE OF A DEAD 
BODY INTO THE — 196. 




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Zbc Sale of a SouU ' i97 


with his hands. His wife knelt at his 
feet with her face down to his knees. 

Was she thanking God for all his 
mercies? 

The shriek of a steamer’s whistle 
sounded across the water, making them 
start to their feet. 

A large steamer was steering for the 
derelict. 

In half an hour they were on its 
decks, surrounded by the faces that had 
been around them aboard the De77terara. 
The five boats had been picked up by 
the steamship San Domingo an hour 
before dawn. 

But one boat remained with its keel 
above the green seas that swirled around 
the stern of the derelict. 


THE END. 


tTbe Bijou Series 


B JSub&le* L. B. Walford. 

B (SlUCStion of Color* F. C. Philips. 
Cbiffon '0 /IBarrlage* Gyp. 

Ipcivate fTlnbcr, etc. J ohn Strange Winter 

IN preparation : 

:fBobemia Unvabeb* James l. ford. 

B Bllbtte ^Sab^* James Welsh. 

Zbc IReb Spell. Francis Gribble. 

From The International Dictionary. 

“Bijou ; a word applied to anything small 
and of elegant workmanship.” 

o 


Ifre&ettclj H. StoRes Company 

publtobero, 1Wew J^orK 


Twentieth Century Series 

An important new series of copyrighted 
novels, of convenient size, in an attrac- 
tive buckram binding, with tasteful stamp- 
ing in silver, at the very moderate price 
of 75 cents. 

Hn tbe ot Blarms, 

BY ROBERT BARR. 

“A very readable and clever story.” — New York 
Sun. 

“ Mr. Barr is a vigorous writer.” — Philadelphia 
Times. 

‘ ‘A charming story told in an exceedingly bright 
and funny manner. ” — Nashville Banner. 

“ Everyone must read ‘ In the Midst of Alarms.’ 
It is a pity more of such books do not exist.” — 
Chicago Herald. 

Zbc 2)evirs pla^grounD. 

BY JOHN MACKIE. 

•A Stirring story of frontier life in Canada. 
It keeps the reader interested from the 
first to the last. 

“ It is a simply, but tragically conceived story of 
the wild North-West. It possesses the reality of a 
tale spoken from the life.” — London Literary World. 

“Full of excellent and graphic pictures.” — The 
Whitehall Review 

Zbc jface anD tbe dlbasb. 

A collection of short stories by Robert 
Barr. 

“ The coming short story writer, in my opinion.” 
— A. Conan Doyle. 


“The book is made up of capital stories.” — 
New York Commercial Advertiser. 

“ It would be difficult to exaggerate in praise of 
this clever little book.” — P hiladelphia To-Day. 


XLbc ip>bantom Death, 

AND OTHER STORIES OF THE SEA. 

BY W. CLARK RUSSELL. 

“ Mr. Russell has no rival in the line of marine 
fiction.” — Buffalo Conifnercial. 

“ Eleven of Clark Russell’s sea tales in one 
volume is certainly a treat.” — Rochester Herald. 

“ A breath of salt, not unwelcomed at this season 
of inland breezes, comes to us at our desk as we 
open ‘ The Phantom Death.’ ” — New York Hotise- 
wife. 


tlbe Sale of a Soul, 

BY F. FRANKFORT MOORE. 

DeaO /Iban's Court. 

BY MAURICE H. HERVEY. 

tiojin. 

BY OUIDA. 

Sinners trwain, 

A TALE OF THE GREAT LONE LAND. 

BY JOHN MACKIE. 

AUTHOR OF “ THE DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND.” 

11 jflibarrieO a lltllife. 

BY JOHN STRANGE WINTER. 

Diana's Ibunting. 

BY ROBERT BUCHANAN. 


For sale by all booksellers , or sent postpaid by 


FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY, 


27-29 WEST 23D STREET, NEW YORK. 











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